Jamie McGowan

Interested in bioinformatics, evolutionary genomics and microbial eukaryotes. Working on protist and fungal genomics 🧬💻🇮🇪

[Nature Communications @NatureComms]

Acrasis kona builds a multicellular fruiting body, despite being a distant relative of other multicellular eukaryotes. Here, Sheikh et al. present the amoeba's genome & developmental transcriptomes.
@socialprotist
@uppsalauni
@SystBio_UU
@baldauf_sandra
https://t.co/VnbsCMtksI

[bioRxiv Evobio @biorxiv_evobio]

Novel high-quality amoeba genomes reveal widespread codon usage mismatch between giant viruses and their hosts https://t.co/WNnAVnlcDY #biorxiv_evobio

[Fund Immunotherapy Ireland @FundImmuno]

My name is Bernard, living in Ireland. I have stage 4 stomach cancer. My medical consultants recommend Immunotherapy and chemotherapy. Despite best scientific and clinical evidence, my Irish healthcare insurer won't fund this. Am I alone?

[A. Murat Eren (Meren) @merenbey]

Well, @tomodelmont and I wrote this short piece for YOU, and it is now online at @NatureNV!

https://t.co/zsItvp7rRn

It was a great opportunity to discuss the utility of MAGs from marine systems to support bioprospecting and to deliver one of the promises of microbiology 😇

[Jamie McGowan @_jamiemcgowan]

@JimCarolanMU Cheers Jim! Reassignments seem to be very rare across eukaryotes but this particular protist phylum is an outlier with about 10 different genetic code variants!

[Jamie McGowan @_jamiemcgowan]

New preprint exploring genetic code evolution in Phyllopharyngean ciliates

We show that the UAG stop codon has been reassigned to code for Leucine/Glutamine in some members of this class

with @neilhall_uk, Tom Richards, and David Swarbreck @EarlhamInst

https://t.co/UJlOHTsTFV

[Jamie McGowan @_jamiemcgowan]

We show that UAA is firmly fixed as the preferred stop codon in this lineage

In taxa with variant genetic codes, UAG is used in most genes (>78% of genes) suggesting its function is fixed as a sense codon

A divergence to previous variants where UAA and UAG have the same meaning

[Jamie McGowan @_jamiemcgowan]

Phylogenomic analysis grouped the 3 TARA MAGs as a monophyletic lineage suggesting a common origin of UAG being translated to leucine

Whereas translation of UAG to glutamine is polyphyletic

Our phylogeny suggests that ancestral Phyllopharyngea used the canonical genetic code

[PLOS Biology @PLOSBiology]

Genomes from single #flies! Sequencing of lab-cultured species results in taxon sampling bias. @Bernard_Y_Kim @PetrovADmitri &co assemble #genomes of 183 single wild-collected #drosophilids & inbred lines, redressing the bias to lab organisms #PLOSBiology https://t.co/EMTQlRkTHQ

[bioRxiv @biorxivpreprint]

Cryptic Cryptophytes-revision of the genus Goniomonas https://t.co/Gn0pyzL0Jx #bioRxiv

[CCAPOban @CCAP_Oban]

And the second new #protist #genome just published as part of the @darwintreelife project: Marvania coccoides CCAP 251/1B

https://t.co/fqpREZmycV

[CCAPOban @CCAP_Oban]

The first of two new #protist genomes published as part of the @darwintreelife project: Pseudopediastrum boryanum CCAP 291/2

https://t.co/leHI2TbXNf

[Sebastian Schornack @dromius]

Zhang et al. Complete telomere-to-telomere genomes uncover virulence evolution conferred by chromosome fusion in oomycete plant pathogens (and ANK repeat effectors) - @SuomengDong Wenwu Ye @Phytophthora1 labs

https://t.co/l8UVIMO9Md

[Microbiome @MicrobiomeJ]

Exploring the landscape of symbiotic diversity and distribution in unicellular ciliated protists https://t.co/BBsIYmTWO6

[Mike Vella @vellamike]

At @nanopore we have successfully sequenced a yeast chromosome, telomere to telomere, in one read.

[bioRxiv @biorxivpreprint]

Telomere-to-telomere phased genome assembly using error-corrected Simplex nanopore reads https://t.co/F2D2ssijEE #bioRxiv