Nowick Lab

We are organizing an international programming school for Biologists (or related scientists). The focus will be on teaching how to solve questions related to evolution in a computational way. The school will take place at the University Leipzig from March 17th to April 1st 2012. For more information about the course and how to apply see: http://evop.bioinf.uni-leipzig.de.

Together with Rui Faria’s group from CIBIO (Research Centre in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal) we got awarded our grant to study chromosomal speciation. We will investigate the “Genomic distribution of sequence and gene expression differences between mammalian species: the importance of chromosomal
rearrangements in speciation”. The project will be funded by the initiatives of the German DAAD and the Portuguese FCT and CRUP on person exchange: “Acções Integradas Luso-Alemãs”.

Rosalina, Stefano, and Lia presented their latest research results at the annual Fall seminar in Bioinformatics in Vysoka Lipa (Decin), in the Czech Republic. We also enjoyed the company of all of our colleagues while playing games, hiking, and drinking …

Thanks to Marcus Lechner for the pictures!

In this paper we describe the genome of a German individual for which we independently sequenced both haplotype sequences of each chromosome. We revealed that most genes and their regulatory regions have different sequences on the two chromosomes. This means that for some proteins, a cell can produce two different versions with different functionalities and sometimes in different quantities. Zinc finger proteins are enriched among these proteins, which increases the number of different transcription factors that are active in a cell and might allow for a more complex or fine-tuned gene regulation.

The work was led by Dr. Margret Hoehe at the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin. You can access the genome via the UCSC genome browser: http://www.molgen.mpg.de/~genetic-variation/MaxPlanckOneUCSC. Here is a link to the paper: http://genome.cshlp.org/content/early/2011/08/02/gr.125047.111.abstract

On August 2nd we had our lab warming party. Together with Dr. Yvonne Böttcher’s junior research group (“Genetics of Adipositas”) we celebrated the start of our wet lab activities. We want to thank everybody of the former Interdisciplinary Center for Clinical Research (IZKF) for welcoming us so warmly.

Our group, Petra (our secretary), and Jens (our systems administrator) at the party

Nadine Rastig now supports our group as a student assistant. Nadine currently studies Biology in the 5th semester. She is helping our group in the lab by participating in various experiments. Welcome, Nadine!

Our paper describing the content and evolution of Krüppel-type zinc finger (KZNF) genes in primates is accepted for publication in PLoS One: http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0021553. Data from this project are contained in our Primate KZNF catalog (http://znf.igb.uiuc.edu/). The work was performed in Prof. Lisa Stubbs’ lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The paper will be online starting June 29th.

Rui Faria from CIBIO (Research Center in Biodiversidade and Genetic Resources) at the University of Porto, Portugal, visited our lab from May 15th to May 22nd. He gave a talk on “Chromosomal speciation revisited: rearranging theory with pieces of evidence”.

Luz Rosalina Tincopa Marca from Peru joined our lab on May 10th as our second PhD student. Welcome Rosalina!

Lia Abbasi Moheb joined our group on April 1st as a postdoc. Welcome Lia!