Our work on genetics of ruff behavior published in Science

Our study A single gene orchestrates androgen variation underlying male mating morphs in ruffs“ made in on the cover of Science!

Ruffs – a shore bird species – come in three different morphs that differ in appearance and behavior. “Independents,” have darker plumage and aggressively defend a small territory in mating arenas, “satellites” have lighter-colored plumage and court peacefully, while “faeder” morphs a hard to distinguish from female ruffs, allowing them to sneak into the mating arenas unnoticed. Using a combination of transcriptomics and molecular biology methods, we showed that an enzyme, which is encoded by a gene in a recently inverted genomic region, is responsible for regulating testosterone levels, underlying the differences in phenotype and mating of the morphs.

Our team was led by Clemens Küpper (Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence) with exceptional contributions from Alex Zemella, Jasmine Loveland and Vladimir Jovanovic. More information can be found in our press releases in German and English.

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PNAS paper on Realized relatedness of Macaques is out

Our genomic study of rhesus macaques from Cayo Santiago in Puerto Rico “Estimating realized relatedness in free-ranging macaques by inferring identity-by-descent segments” has been published in PNAS. We show that utilizing information from identity-by-descent (IBD) segments, relatedness of individuals in natural population can be analyzed without prior knowledge on their pedigree, Revealing Hidden Genetic Ties. This work was lead by Prof. Anja Widdig from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, with major contributions from Annika Freudiger, Vladimir Jovanovic and Dr. Harad Ringbauer.

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TEKRABber paper in eLife

Yao’s paper on his new tool for the interaction of Transposable Elements (TEs) with genes, TEKRABber, is published as Reviewed Preprint, “Regulatory networks of KRAB zinc finger genes and transposable elements changed during human brain evolution and disease” in eLife. Having in mind that KRAB-ZNF transcription factor genes evolve very quickly in primates and that some KRAB-ZNF proteins might repress fast evolving TEs, Yao developed an R package for the comparative analysis of such interactions. He shows that there are indeed many human specific interactions, which might be relevant for human for the evolution and for diseases of the human brain.

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Nomenclutter manuscript accepted

Our manuscript has been accepted for publication in Ecology and Evolution. Congratulations to Baja and Vanessa!

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Provenience Seminar Series

Are you interested in provenience, human remains at FU and ethical considerations? We are discussing this in a new seminar series organized by Vanessa. It takes place Tuesdays at 5pm in the big lecture hall of the Zoology building (Koenigin-Luise-Strasse 1-3). You are invited to come, to listen to inspiring talks from us and guests and to discuss with us!

An interview with more information about Vanessa and our provenience project can be found here.

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Nomenclutter manuscript recommended by PCI

Our manuscript on mtDNA “Nomenclutter” and its Consequences on the Interpretation of Genetic Data has been accepted and recoomended by PCIEvolBiol. The very nice recommendation can be found here. Congratulations to Baja and Vanessa!

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TEKRABber manuscript submitted to bioRxiv

We submitted our manuscript on our study of functional relationships between KRAB-ZNF genes and transposable elements (TEs) to bioRxiv: “Regulatory networks of KRAB zinc finger genes and transposable elements changed during human brain evolution and disease”. In this work, Yao and Arnaud discovered that gene expression as well as regulation of TEs differs in the human brain compared to other primates. It also has changed in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease. To perform this comparative assessment of TE:KRAB-ZNF relationships, Yao developed an R package, called TEKRABber, which is publicly available on Bioconductor.

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Manuscript on “mtDNA “Nomenclutter” submitted to PCI

You have submitted your preprint entitled mtDNA “Nomenclutter” and its Consequences on the Interpretation of Genetic Data” to PCIEvolBiol, the Peer Community In for Evolutionary Biology. Baja and Vanessa describe very clearly the history of the nomenclature of human mitochondrial haplogroups, its inconsistencies, and what can go wrong if not properly applied in human population genetics studies.

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We finally have a new TA: Anne

We are happy to announce that we could finally hire Anne as our new technician. We are getting up to speed with our experiments 🙂

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Marula started her PhD

We have a new PhD student, Marula Mathew, who is strengthening the wetlab site of our team. Welcome Marula!

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