Professor McInerney Elected Fellow Of The Linnean society

On the 17th March 2016, Professor McInerney was elected as a fellow of the Linnean Society.   From the linnean society website: The Linnean Society of London is the world’s oldest active biological society. Founded in 1788, the Society takes its name from the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) whose botanical, zoological and library collections […]

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Endosymbiotic Origins and Differential Losses of Genes in Eukaryotes

Nature have just published a full article concerning an analysis of horizontal (or lateral) gene transfer and how it is different between prokaryotes and eukaryotes [1].  Also, we examined whether eukaryotes experience significant continuous gene gains from prokaryotes over long periods of time, or whether we see evidence for discrete bursts of gene acquisitions. Hint: […]

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Prof. McInerney invited to speak at IUMS 2014

Professor McInerney has been invited to speak at the International Union of Microbiology Societies annual meeting in Montréal, Canada from July 27th-August 1, 2014. This meeting is collectively known as the International Congress of Microbiology and it consists of three separate congresses: the XIVth International Congress of Bacteriology and Applied Microbiology, the XVIth International Congress of Virology and the XIVth International […]

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Green Anaconda Visits Lab

Today we had the pleasure of welcoming an unusual visitor into the lab – a green anaconda.  The snake is owned by JP Dunbar, a herpteologist and snake enthusiast who recently graduated from NUI Maynooth and who is heavily involved in helping people understand and appreciate reptiles, amphibians and all animals generally. Not everybody was […]

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Nautil.Us Article on Eukaryote Origins

Ed Yong has written an excellent article on Eukaryote Origins. Professor McInerney was interviewed as part of the article and the article also includes interviews with several other people involved with trying to understand the origin of the eukaryote cell. In this article, Yong makes a distinction between the “slow fuse” type of hypothesis governing […]

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Professor McInerney Conferred With Higher Doctorate

Professor McInerney of the Bioinformatics and Molecular Evolution Unit graduated yesterday with a DSc degree from the National University of Ireland. The DSc, which is a higher doctorate, was awarded for his thesis entitled “Studies on the Evolution of Genes and Genomes”.  This thesis was entirely based on published research papers. The degree was awarded on […]

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Scientific American Run Article on Halophile work

Lucas Brouwers has written a very nice account, entitled “How genetic plunder transformed a microbe into a pink, salt-loving scavenger” about the Halophile work we published in PNAS. You can read it here: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtomics/2013/04/22/how-genetic-plunder-transformed-a-microbe-into-a-pink-salt-loving-scavenger/

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