News

• New preprint by Scarpa and Kofler in bioRxiv: The impact of paramutations on the invasion dynamics of transposable elements.

• New preprint by Wierzbicki and Kofler in bioRxiv: The composition of piRNA clusters in Drosophila melanogaster deviates from expectations under the trap model.

• New preprint by Selvaraju, Wierzbicki and Kofler in bioRxiv: P-element invasions in Drosophila erecta shed light on the establishment of host control over a transposable element.

• Students of the Vienna Graduate School of Population Genetics organise the practical course "Experimental evolution: Bringing theory and practice together” from December 5 to 9, 2022 at the Vetmeduni Vienna. Our students coodinated the entire course, invited speakers, screened applications from around the world and planned, taught and tutored all practical sessions for the participants to train on real data.

  Link to course website

• We had a nice get-together for our Xmas party painting mugs and plates for colleagues, and enjoyed pizza. We celebrate a successful year, slowly emerging from the pandemic restrictions.
   
• Congratulations to Neda Barghi and colleagues! The Austrian Science Fund FWF approved the Special Research Programme (SFB) "Polygenic adaptation: from single selected loci to the infinitesimal model", lead by Neda Barghi. During a 4-year period, funds of 3,9 million Euro will enable the SFB members to conduct excellent research in the field of population genetics. The SFB is a joint collaboration of Neda Barghi (speaker), Robert Kofler and Christian Schlötterer (Institute of Population Genetics, Vetmeduni), vice speaker Joachim Hermisson and Himani Sachdeva (Univ. of Vienna), Magnus Nordborg and Kelly Swarts (GMI), and Nick Barton (ISTA).

• Congratulations to research associate Viola Nolte on her promotion to Vetmeduni's expert status in acknowledgement of her excellent and permanently high performance over the years.
   
• New preprint by Chen, Pelizzola and Futschik in bioRxiv: Haplotype based testing for a better understanding of the selective architecture.

• The Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) published an article about the unusually high number of fruit flies currently appearing in Vienna. While Drosophila populations indeed thrive every year during wine harvest season, this year's mild October temperatures caused by the climate crisis increase the fly's growth rates as explained by Christian Schlötterer: ORF News
   
• Paper out in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences by Burny, Nolte, Dolezal and Schlötterer: Genome-wide selection signatures reveal widespread synergistic effects of two different stressors in Drosophila melanogaster.

• Introductory course for PhD students is taught during September. More information: https://www.popgen-vienna.at/training/introductory-course/

• Prof. Stefan Kramer (see https://www.datamining.informatik.uni-mainz.de/stefan-kramer/) and PhD student Julia Siekiera, M.Sc. (see https://www.datamining.informatik.uni-mainz.de/julia-siekiera/) from the Institute of Computer Science of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz will visit PopGen Vienna from August 3rd to August 5th to collaborate with the group of Christian Schlötterer. Julia Siekiera will give a talk on the joint work about deep learning in population genetics.

June 2022

• Paper out in MBE by Robert Kofler, Viola Nolte and Christian Schlötterer: The Transposition Rate Has Little Influence on the Plateauing Level of the P-element.

• Head of institute Christian Schlötterer, PopGen Vienna students Dagny Runarsdottir and Benjamin Wölfl (Univ. of Vienna), and former PopGen Vienna faculty member Angela Hancock are currently hosted by the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP). KITP as part of the University of California, Santa Barbara, is one of the most renowned institutes for theoretical physics and related fields. Christian Schlötterer was invited to co-coordinate the KITP workshop “Towards an Integrative View of Adaptation: Bridging Population and Quantitative Genetics” (June 13 - July 15, 2022).

Mai 2022

• Paper out in Genome Biol. by Christodoulaki, Nolte, Lai and Schlötterer: Natural variation in Drosophila shows weak pleiotropic effects. Press release German / English

April 2022

• Graduate alumna Ana Marija Jakšić, group leader at EPFL in Lausanne, was recently portayed in The Scientist: https://www.the-scientist.com/scientist-to-watch/ana-marija-jak-i-shapes-fruit-fly-brains-69863 Jakšić lab: https://www.jaksiclab.com/

• New collaborative paper out in G3 with participation of alumna Anna Maria Langmüller: A homing suppression gene drive with multiplexed gRNAs maintains high drive conversion efficiency and avoids functional resistance alleles.

• Congratulations to Aglaia Szukala (PopGen Vienna / Paun group) on her successful PhD defense: "Parallel and adaptive processes during ecotype formation in Heliosperma pusillum"

March 2022

• Congratulations to PopGen Vienna alumna Polina Novikova, currently group leader at MPIZ in Cologne, on securing an ERC Starting Grant! Novikova lab: https://www.mpipz.mpg.de/novikova

February 2022

• Congratulations to Marta Pelizzola (Futschik group) on her successful PhD defense: "Developing and testing statistical methods for experimental evolution".

• New paper out in G3 by Emmanouil Lirakis, Viola Nolte and Christian Schlötterer:
  Pool-GWAS on reproductive dormancy in Drosophila simulans suggests a polygenic architecture.

January 2022

• Congratulations to Florian Schwarz (Kofler group) on his successful PhD defense: "Towards unraveling the dynamics of transposable elements."

December 2021

• Just out in Proc. R. Soc. B Biol. Sci. by Rupert Mazzucco and Christian Schlötterer: Long-term gut microbiome dynamics in Drosophila melanogaster reveal environment-specific associations between bacterial taxa at the family level.

• Accepted in Mol Ecol by Filip Wierzbicki, Robert Kofler and Sarah Signor: Evolutionary dynamics of piRNA clusters in Drosophila.

November 2021

• DK members Elif Bozlak and Lara Radovic and DK faculty member Barbara Wallner won the 1st prize at the VetIdeas Challenge. Congratulations!

• Congratulations to Robert Kofler on two FWF grants! ( P34965 “Unravelling the dynamics of transposable elements with long-read sequencing” and P35093 “Does the size of piRNA clusters predict the abundance of transposable element insertions?”)

• Congratulations to Sheng-Kai Hsu (Schlötterer group) on his successful PhD defense: "The role of sex evolution - Sexual conflict and Sexual selection."

• Paper by Wei-Yun Lai and Christian Schlötterer now accepted in Mol. Ecol.:  Evolution of phenotypic variance in response to a novel hot environment.

October 2021

• Early online in Genome Biol Evol by Claire Burny, Viola Nolte, Marlies Dolezal and Christian Schlötterer: Highly parallel genomic selection response in replicated Drosophila melanogaster populations with reduced genetic variation.

• Preprint in bioRxiv by Claire Burny, Viola Nolte, Marlies Dolezal and Christian Schlötterer:
  Genome-wide selection signatures reveal widespread synergistic effects of culture conditions and temperature stress in Drosophila melanogaster.

• Our winter term webinars resume. Details and registration here: https://www.popgen-vienna.at/news/seminars/

September 2021

• Congratulations to Anna Maria Langmüller (Schlötterer group) on her PhD zoom defense entitled "The detection of temperature-dependent fitness effects with Evolve and Resequence experiments". We wish Anna all the best for her new adventures as a postdoc at Cornell Univ. (US)

• Preprint by Kofler, Nolte and Schlötterer: The transposition rate has little influence on equilibrium copy numbers of the P-element.

August 2021

• Preprint by Wierzbicki, Kofler and Signor: Evolutionary dynamics of piRNA clusters in Drosophila.

July 2021

• PhD students Dagny Runarsdottir and Lara Radovic reach out to young researchers at Children's University to explain how populations evolve.

• Congratulations to alumna Ana Marija Jaksic for having been selected as a runner-up for the prestigious best student paper award for papers published in MBE during 2020 with the paper Neuronal Function and Dopamine Signaling Evolve at High Temperature in Drosophila.

• Early online in Genome Biol Evol by Langmüller, Dolezal and Schlötterer: Fine mapping without phenotyping: Identification of selection targets in secondary Evolve and Resequence experiments.

• Paper just out in Genome Biol by Otte, Nolte, Mallard and Schlötterer: The genetic architecture of temperature adaptation is shaped by population ancestry and not by selection regime.

June 2021

• Paper recently accepted in Mol Ecol Res by Wierzbicki,* Schwarz*, Cannalonga and Kofler: Novel quality metrics allow identifying and generating high-quality assemblies of piRNA clusters. *shared authorship

• Preprint online, co-authored by AM Langmüller: A homing suppression gene drive with multiplexed gRNAs maintains high drive conversion efficiency and avoids functional resistance alleles.

• Congratulations to Lara Radovic (Wallner group), winner of the student competition (genetics) at the Equine Science Society Virtual Symposium!

May 2021

• Scientific Advisory Board was organized online (May 17-20).

• Preprint just out: AM Langmüller et al.: Fitness effects of CRISPR endonucleases in Drosophila melanogaster populations.

April 2021

• Congratulations to Emmanouil Lyrakis (Schlötterer group) on the highest exam grade for his PhD zoom defense "The physiological and genetic basis of reproductive dormancy in Drosophila fruit flies". We're happy to keep Manolis at the Bioinformatics and Biostatistics Platform.

• New preprint: Burny, Nolte, Dolezal and Schlötterer: Highly parallel genomic selection response in replicated Drosophila melanogaster populations with reduced genetic variation.

• New preprint: Wölfl, te Rietmole, Salvioli, Kaznatcheev, Thuijsman, Brown, Burgering and Staňková: The contribution of evolutionary game theory to understanding and treating cancer.

March 2021

• Congratulations to Martin Pontz (Bürger group) on successfully defending his PhD thesis "Effects of epistasis in population genetic two-locus models" online.

• Congratulations to Rui Borges on his FWF grant "PoMo-cod: a polymorphism-aware phylogenetic codon model".

• Collaborative paper in Sci Rep by Fischer, Koblmüller, Börger, Michelitsch, Trajanoski, Schlötterer, Guelly, Thallinger, Sturmbauer: Genome sequences of Tropheus moorii and Petrochromis trewavasae, two eco-morphologically divergent cichlid fishes endemic to Lake Tanganyika.

• Collaborative paper in Nat Protoc by Bayle, Fiche, Burny, Platre, Nollmann, Martinière and Jaillais: Single-particle tracking photoactivated localization microscopy of membrane proteins in living plant tissues.

February 2021

• Alumnus Thomas Taus was promoted to Teamleader - Reporting and Analysis at Porsche Informatik GmbH in Salzburg. Congratulations!

• Congratulations to our PhD candidate Anna Maria Langmüller, she received a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship for 2 years of postdoctoral research at Cornell University and 1 year back at Univ. of Vienna!

January 2021

• New preprint: Langmüller, Dolezal and Schlötterer: Fine mapping without phenotyping: Identification of selection targets in secondary Evolve and Resequence experiments.

• New preprint: Lai, Nolte, Jakšić and Schlötterer: Evolution of phenotypic variance provides insights into the genetic basis of adaption.

• New preprint: Lai and Schlötterer: Evolution of gene expression variance during adaptation to high temperature in Drosophila.

• New preprint: Szukala et al.: Polygenic routes lead to parallel altitudinal adaptation in Heliosperma pusillum (Caryophyllaceae).

• Congratulations to Christina Hedderich on winning the 1st prize for her poster "Population genomics shows last European stand of Artemisia laciniata is diverse despite population size" at the poster competition of the virtual edition of the 54th Population Genetics Group Meeting.

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