There is something amazingly captivating about turtles: those slow, long-living, hard-shelled creatures, which look very much like how you’d expect a miniature version of some dinosaur to look. They have inspired artists for many years, and continue to do so, from the Mock Turtle in Lewis Caroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, through the impressive, world-carrying… Read more »
JBS Haldane famously remarked that the Creator appears to be inordinately fond of beetles – with over 400,000 species described, they make up over a quarter of all known animal species. This enthusiasm has not been shared by genomicists. Only a single beetle genome has been completed, that of the red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum…. Read more »
Carbohydrate active enzymes are typically found in fungi including white rot, brown rot and plant pathogenic fungi. These micro-organisms degrade the complex matrix of the plant cell wall containing lignin, hemicelluloses, cellulose, polysacchariades and pectin. Since 1998, the CAZy database has carefully curated data on five families of carbohydrate active enzymes: glycoside hydrolases (GH), glycosyltransferases… Read more »
That's one small step for a man, a giant leap for mankind – a quote infamous for two reasons: the first words uttered by a man on the moon, and the answer to the feared 'Bioinformatics Challenge' at the most recent incarnation of Beyond The Genome, a conference run annually by Genome Biology and our… Read more »
Looking at the problem of sex determination from our anthropocentric perspective, it is easy to forget that the world doesn’t revolve around the Y chromosome. Some animals determine their sex simply by changing the number of X chromosomes (BFF of many Genome Biology readers, C. elegans, belongs to this group). For others, like crocodiles and… Read more »
Wetlands contribute significantly to strategies mitigating for food insecurity in Uganda, finds a new study published in Agriculture & Food Security today. Wetlands provide vital nutrients for crop farming and ensure water availability during dry seasons which is important for irrigation. Because of this Ugandan wetlands have seen an influx of people using these resources… Read more »
The colourations and patterns on a female great tit’s (Parus major) plumage indicates the ability to produce healthier offspring, finds an article published today in Frontiers in Zoology. The black stripe across her breast and white patches on her cheeks correlate to a chick’s weight at two weeks and immune strength respectively – though the… Read more »
BMC Ecology is delighted to announce the winning images in its very first Ecology Image Competition. We were truly overwhelmed by the positive response to the competition, which received more than 200 individual entries from researchers across the world. In an accompanying Editorial, guest judge Dr Yan Wong and the journal’s Editorial Board outline what… Read more »
Genome Biology is now inviting submissions for a special issue on "the RBPome". Advances in genomics have vastly improved our ability to investigate the cellular landscape of RNA-binding proteins (RBPs), and have uncovered a vast territory of gene regulation previously hidden from view. The interest in the RBPome that has arisen from these recent advances… Read more »
Guest blog post by Bonnie Baxter and R. Thane Papke Halophiles 2013: The International Congress on Halophilic Microorganisms is a multidisciplinary international conference, with a strong history of regular triennial meetings since 1978. As the title implies, our research passions are found at the interface of salt and microorganisms, and our motivation for organizing such… Read more »