Funny advert placement

I'm sorry to my more serious readers, but I just could not resist when I saw this. The ad placement next to a story about our work on sexual versus asexual reproduction is priceless. The full story appears here on the UPI site. The paper is here on the Molecular Biology and Evolution site.

Nasonia genomes published

I thought that I would devote my 2010 inaugural post to a report of three Nasonia genomes that appears in todays' Science. The genome paper is accompanied by a really interesting News Focus that appears in the same issue of Science.

A small group in my lab (Andrew Schurko, Danielle Mazur and me) contributed some analyses of the meiotic genes in the Nasonia vitripennis genome. Unfortunately, due to space considerations, our work fell on the cutting room floor for the Science paper. However, we do have a complete report of our findings that is in press at Insect Molecular Biology.

UPDATE: The Nasonia genome special issue of Insect Molecular Biology is now available online. Our paper, "Inventory and phylogenomic distribution of meiotic genes in Nasonia vitripennis and among diverse arthropods" is here.

(photo is copyright John H. Werren, 1980)

GBE: Genome Biology and Evolution

Just a short note to promote the fact that the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution (SMBE) has launched a new journal, Genome Biology and Evolution (GBE). The founding Editor is Takashi Gojobori and the Editor-in-chief is William (Bill) Martin, who was the previous Editor of the main SMBE journal, Molecular Biology and Evolution (MBE).

According to the GBE website:

"Genome Biology and Evolution publishes evolutionary advances at the forefront of genomics. Papers considered for publication report novel findings in the field of evolutionary biology that concern natural genome diversity, population genomics, the structure, function, organisation and expression of genomes, comparative genomics, proteomics, and environmental genomic interactions. Major evolutionary insights from the fields of computational biology, structural biology, developmental biology, and cell biology are also considered, as are theoretical advances in the field of genome evolution."

It is an on-line only, Open Access journal published for SMBE by Oxford Journals (who also publish MBE). See here for more information. Congratulations and good luck to Bill, Takashi and the Editorial Board! I had better read the instructions to authors and then get busy preparing my first submission (of what will likely be many).