Manchester Evolution Symposium

This is the webpage of the Manchester Evolution Symposium, funded by the Templeton Foundation and the research Domain of Evolution, Systems and Genomics. Organiser: Professor James O. McInerney Key Administrator: Marian Halfpenny Strategic Funding Team Support: Dr. Daniel Jameson Thursday 14th December, Kanaris Theatre 10:30 Arrival, Registration & Coffee 11:00-11:30 Mark Wilkinson ‘Post Phylogenetic Systematics’ […]

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Short Video Explaining Pangenomes Paper

This is a short video to accompany our recent paper, published here: http://www.nature.com/articles/nmicrobiol201740 The citation is: McInerney, J.O., McNally, A and O’Connell, M.J. (2017) Why Prokaryotes Have Pangenomes. Nature Microbiology 2, 17040 (doi:10.1038/nmicrobiol.2017.40). Please use the social media buttons to share.

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SciFri Talk at The Natural History Museum

On October 28th, 2016, Prof. McInerney gave a talk at The Natural History Museum, London on the subject of “Network Thinking”.  The specific title for the talk was “The dominant role of mergers in evolutionary history” and the talk took place in the Neil Chalmers seminar room.

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Latest Paper: Combined Analysis of Variation in Core, Accessory and Regulatory Genome Regions Provides a Super-Resolution View into the Evolution of Bacterial Populations

Our latest paper has just been published. It is on the evolution of Escherichia coli, which is a pathogenic bacterium.  The work was led by Dr. Alan McNally, who has just moved from Nottingham Trent University to Birmingham University. The work centres on the analysis of what we call the pangenome of this bacterium.  There is a lot […]

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BBSRC Grant Announcement

The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) have confirmed the award of £326,000 to the McInerney lab to investigate how recombination structures life on the planet. The title of the research proposal is “Investigating how non-homologous recombination structures genes, proteins, operons, clusters, genomes and ecosystems”. Over a period of three years, this programme will […]

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Prof. McInerney Inducted Into American Academy of Microbiology

At a luncheon at the New Orleans Mariott Hotel, Prof McInerney was inducted into the American Academy of Microbiology as a Fellow. In total, 79 fellows were elected this year.  According to the academy:   The American Academy of Microbiology (Academy) is the honorific leadership group within the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), the world’s […]

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Post-doc position available (starting immediately)

There is a post-doc position available in my research group in Ireland. The position is to continue our work on the origins and early evolution of eukaryotes.  In this case, we are going to dig into the metabolism of early eukaryotes.  We will spend time trying to reconstruct ancestral metabolisms, analysing the origins of eukaryote-specific […]

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Royal Society University Research Fellowships

This scheme is for outstanding scientists in the UK who are in the early stages of their research career and have the potential to become leaders in their field. The scheme provides the opportunity to build an independent research career. Those appointed are expected to be strong candidates for permanent posts in universities at the […]

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Bioinformatics and Phylogenetics Summer School 2015

Current State of Registrations: [wppb progress=100 option=”red candystripe” location=inside] We’re full. What?: Week-long, intensive phylogenetics course covering all aspects of bioinformatics and phylogenetics/phylogenomics. Where?: Department of Biology, National University of Ireland Maynooth.  This is approximately 40 minutes from Dublin Airport (Aer Lingus, British Airways, Ryanair, American Airlines, Lufthansa, Air France, etc.) ,  25km from the centre […]

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Short News and Views Article Published In Nature

A recent comment from the lab was published in Nature in the News and Views Section on the evolution of developmental genes in animals. With the sequencing of sponge genomes, if is becoming obvious that the standard view of the evolutionary history of developmental genes is somewhat over-simplified.  Sponges have ParaHox, NK and possibly HOX genes, […]

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Prof. McInerney to give plenary at the Sociedad Española de Biología Evolutiva Meeting 2014

Professor McInerney is to give the plenary lecture at the Sociedad Española de Biología Evolutiva meeting in Barcelona on July 1st.   This meeting is the premier evolution meeting in Spain and this year it is being organised by the Societat Catalana de Biologia.   You can see more information about this meeting here: http://blogs.iec.cat/scb/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2014/05/XIV-JORNADA-DE-BIOLOGIA-EVOLUTIVA2014.pdf […]

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Bioenergetics and The Major Evolutionary Transitions

I spoke at a meeting organised by Nick Lane at Chichley Hall, home of the Kavli Royal Society International Centre, Buckinghamshire. This was a wonderful meeting, full of diverse talks and with a lot of people interested in major evolutionary transitions on the planet. The programme for the meeting can be picked up here. I gave […]

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Pervasive horizontal gene transfer in Chlamydia

The genome era has really taught us something impressive about the plasticity of bacterial genomes. Gene exchange between strains of the same species and gene exchange between different species is not limited to special categories of genes and is not limited to ‘oddball’ species.  It is pervasive, frequent and it is also a public health […]

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Clans, clades and unrooted trees

A few years back, Mark Wilkinson at The Natural History Museum, London came up with the idea that we should really have a more precise language for groups that we can see on unrooted trees. The problem stemmed from the fact that on an unrooted tree a clade is not defined. A clade is a […]

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