This Friday I enjoyed the privilege of being a Phd. examiner for the first time. The (un)fortunate individual was Ari Jon Arason, who has been working on the functional role of human bronchial derived basal cells in regeneration and fibrosis within the Faculty of medicine.
Emma Rawlins from the Gurdon Institute was the other examiner, and she did a marvelous job. She works in the field of stem cell biology and has a fabulously interesting paper on biophysical model of basal stem cell populations (Watson JK, Rulands S, Wilkinson AC, Wuidart A, Ousset M, Van Keymeulen A, Gottgens B, Blanpain C, Simons BD and Rawlins EL (2015) Clonal Dynamics Reveal Two Distinct Populations of Basal Cells in Slow Turnover Airway Epithelium. Cell Reports 12, 1-12)
After her questions all I could ask about was evolution of lungs, and stem cells and variation in lung structures between individuals, and transcription factor isoforms of course. All in all this was an enjoyable experience. The work was well executed and interesting, his thesis was a good read and corduroy gowns a lot less awful than I imagined. For some reason the University of Iceland has adopted very formal guidelines for PhD. defenses, involving gowns, parading and verbose introductions and declarations. At least the Rector does not have to sip champagne with every new Phd, as the earlier guidelines stipulated.
Sigridur Helga Thorbjarnardottir passed away late 2015. She was my main advisor during my master studies at the University of Iceland. The other advisor was Gudmundur Eggertsson. Sigridur was also the head of the Icelandic biological society in the eighties. The eulogy in icelandic appeared in the local paper and on the website of the society.
In the beginning of November the Icelandic biological society and associates organized a conference on biological research in Iceland. This event has run biannually since 2009, and before that it was organized by the society and the Institute of Biology at the University of Iceland (every 5 years).
Continue reading 'IceBio 2015'»
Which principles influence the rewiring and tuning of gene regulatory networks? How do those network react to genetic perturbations? We are seeking a post-doc to tackle those and related questions in project utilizing populations of Drosophila (fruit flies) that have undergone compensatory adaptation using experimental evolution and artificial selection. The project involves the analysis of tissue specific RNA-seq and numerical analyses. The ideal candidate is strong in evolutionary genetics, statistical and bioinformatic analyses and with capable hands for molecular biology. Excellent communication skills, main focus on writing, are required, as is a solid publication record. The candidate will be encouraged (and given time) to develop their own research program.
This project is built on hypothesis that sprung out of work on indel polymorphism in the even skipped stripes 3+7 enhancer.
Continue reading 'Post doc available: The role of transcriptional and regulatory changes during compensatory evolution'»
In order to follow recent works and discussion in evolutionary genetics and related topics I put up a twitter account.
So far I have not figured out how to make it a nice open timeline, for instance on the sidebar as my friend Ian Dworkin does, but that is a secondary issue.
Here we catalog publications and events, both in Icelandic and English.
Most of the general writing will be in Icelandic, as the objective is to provide a window into the work of biologists.
This page will also be used to catalog the progress of graduate students and coworkers.
Here we catalog publications and events, both in Icelandic and English.
Most of the general writing will be in Icelandic, as the objective is to provide a window into the work of biologists.
This page will also be used to catalog the progress of graduate students and coworkers.
