News

Posted 22nd September 2020

Penicillium genome

Coverage in Daily Mail and CNN of our paper presenting the first genome sequence of the isolate of Pencillium behind Alexander Fleming's original discovery of penicillin. Regrown from the CABI living culture collection.

Posted 1st October 2019

We're moving

Barralab is moving to the University of Oxford, after 23 happy years at the Silwood Park campus, Imperial College London

Posted 11th September 2019

Monograph published

Tim's monograph 'The Evolutionary Biology of Species' was published in the Oxford Series in Ecology and Evolution in June 2019. Please send feedback, ideas or suggestions to t.barraclough@imperial.ac.uk or tweet #EvolBiolSpecies

Posted 19th August 2019

Species matter

Tim's paper introducing a model of an evolving bacterial community is (finally) published. It shows that species matter for determining overall functioning, but evolutionary dynamics can either enhance or reduce overall functioning depending on assumptions about constraints on resource use.

POSTED ON OCTOBER 5, 2018

Comparative genomics of bdelloid rotifers

Reuben Nowell’s paper compared genomes of multiple bdelloid rotifer species for the first time. Some previously reported features of bdelloid genomes that have been attributed as evidence for asexuality were not repeated in the new genomes. Some other features – notably the high prevalence of horizontally acquired genes from bacteria, plants and fungi etc – were confirmed, and shown to be the most unusual feature of bdelloids.

The paper is here

A comment “Full disclosure: genome assembly is still hard” is here

POSTED ON OCTOBER 5, 2018

Contamination and horizontal gene transfer

With so called tardigate, there has been a lot of discussion recently about contamination as an explanation for evidence of horizontal gene transfer. Chris Wilson’s paper showed that inadvertent contamination explained a reported result of gene exchange between bdelloid rotifer individuals, using analyses of Sanger sequencing chromatograms that could be a useful general tool for exploring contamination.

The paper is here

and a comment is here

Note – this does not pertain to evidence that bdelloids have taken up lots of non-metazoan DNA – those results are robust to critical tests for contamination and have been confirmed now in multiple independent studies.

POSTED ON NOVEMBER 28, 2017

Horizontal gene transfer is ancient and ongoing in bdelloids

Isobel Eyres paper showing that horizontal gene exchange is ancient and common to bdelloid species at high levels of unto 10% of genes- much higher than observed in any other animal. Closely related species have picked up unique horizontally transferred genes, showing that the process is ongoing.

The paper was timely because evidence for high frequencies of horizontal transfer in tardigrades, published shortly before, was shown to result from contamination. Our work in this paper and subsequently rule out contamination as an explanation in bdelloids.

POSTED ON MAY 13, 2016

How Do Species Interactions Affect Evolutionary Dynamics Across Whole Communities?

This paper outlines verbal theory, existing evidence and future avenues for studying evolutionary interactions across whole communities. Many thanks to the Biodiversity Research Centre at the University of British Columbia (UBC) for hosting my sabbatical visit. Watching cedar waxwings and hummingbirds from my office window helped inspire this paper. We now need quantitative theory to guide our experiments – watch this space!

POSTED ON MAY 13, 2016

New method for delimiting species from multilocus data for large systematic samples

Tomochika had bright ideas for making multi locus delimitation feasible on much large systematic samples (i.e. multiple individuals and species) while still using genealogical theory. Read about it here. Check out the new software at his website

POSTED ON MAY 13, 2016

Horizontal gene transfer in bdelloid rotifers is ancient, ongoing and more frequent in species from desiccating habitats

6 years of hard work by Isobel shows that horizontal transfer has contributed genetic differences among bdelloids living in different habitats. It seems to be ongoing even in species that do not desiccate – interesting since the mechanism of gene transfer is argued to occur when rotifers repair their DNA following desiccation.

Check out the paper here

POSTED ON MARCH 18, 2015