Engineering Biology Workshop

Very successful Transcriptomics workshop in collaboration with @elementalengbio.bsky.social. Thanks to everyone who came along!

Very excited to be off to the @fogenomics.bsky.social today!

Pathogenicity and Genome Assembly of a Pythium aphanidermatum Isolate Causing Damping‐Off in Amaranth in Controlled Environment Agriculture We isolated Pythium aphanidermatum causing damping-off in amaranth seedlings with genome assembly and annotation highlighting a variety of cell wall-degrading enzymes.

New publication just out that the group contributed to, assembling and annotating a genome of the destructive plant pathogen Pythium aphanidermatum, with @katherinedenby.bsky.social. A tricky one to assemble, with a significant amount of repeats.

bsppjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

A large wood ant, with a dull black gaster and head, and dull brown thorax, is on a pale stone background, and indicated by a blue arrow. Next to it a much smaller ant with a shiny back gaster and shiny brown head and thorax is indicated by a red arrow. The blue arrow at is the wood ant Formica lugubris and the red arrow at is the shining guest ant Formicoxenus nitidulus.

Did you know about these tiny shiny ants (red arrow) living with wood ants (blue arrow)? They are Shining Guest Ants (Formicoxenus) and we have recently discovered that a wood ant nest can be home to several genetically distinct colonies of these 'guests'! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author... 1/5

Another great TSN meeting. Very encouraging to see how active the UK RTP community is. @ukri.org @uk-itss.bsky.social @tech-commit.bsky.social

DAPC scatter plot showing clusters of ant genotypes in six populations of shining guest ants in England and Scotland.

Stacked bar chart showing genetic ancestry (from STRUCTURE analysis) of populations of shining guest ants across seven different sites in England and Scotland.

An interesting and important paper just out, that the group contributed significantly to, on the fascinating shining guest ant and its genetic diversity in English (RHS on plots) and Scottish (LHS on plots) populations. Led by @elvarobinson.bsky.social.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author...