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Our career profiles help young people explore the wide range of #careers in #genomics. Meet Sunil, a Postdoctoral Scientist at Wellcome Sanger Institute, who studies how malaria spreads in areas where it's common. 🔗 cstu.io/33055e

way more active with WIPs and other art/science/engagement showcases at the chill-er place, same handle, because if I post a link no one will see it

Watch as Dr. Petra Korlevic draws the White-Veined Butterfly for a month-long #Invertober challenge. 🦋 See the entire collection of invertebrates that were sequenced as part of the Darwin Tree of Life Project - & each drawing - in this blog: sangerinstitute.blog/2024/10/14/dra…

I'm super proud of this blog ⤵️ sangerinstitute.blog/2024/10/14/dra… Dr. Petra Korlevic came to us w/ this cool idea to highlight #invertober creatures that Darwin Tree of Life had genome sequenced 🎨 My colleague Mark nailed the layout design 🖥️ ....& I totally fell in love with inverts! 🤟

Another year of Wellcome Sanger Institute achievements, ran out of bauble space because I didn't realize there was a panel session whops...

New research on Anopheles funestus in Africa reveals high genetic diversity, widespread insecticide resistance, and promising targets for gene drive vector control. 🦟 Read the full pre-print on the genomic diversity of this important malaria vector biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Preprint is out! We investigated the genomic diversity and evolutionary history of Anopheles funestus mosquitoes, one of the main species transmitting human malaria across Africa. Here’s a visual summary. Art by Petra Korlevic . 1/8 biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

We sequenced 656 modern specimens (collected 2014-2018) and 45 historic specimens (collected 1927-1967) from 16 African countries. Populations from around the equator have higher genetic diversity and are more connected than populations from south of the equator. 2/8

We used a sliding window PCA to visualise structure along the genome. Here you see the 3Rb inversion with three distinct trajectories corresponding to the inversion karyotypes. The lines switching between trajectories are indicative of double recombination events. 3/8

Mosquitoes from North Ghana have reduced genetic diversity consistent with a recent bottleneck. The population from South Benin has remarkable inversion frequencies and might be representative of a locally adapted ecotype. 4/8

An H12 selection scan shows that strong recent signals of selection centred on canonical insecticide resistance genes are shared by multiple populations. 5/8

In mosquitoes from the 1960s we find the rdl A296S mutation, which confers resistance to dieldrin. However, we do not observe any of the known DDT resistance alleles among the historic mosquitoes, even though phenotypic resistance has been reported since the late 1950s. 6/8

We find that the doublesex gene drive target site is highly conserved within our dataset, which bodes well for using the same population suppression gene drive approach in An. funestus as is underway for An. gambiae. 7/8

This work is the result of a fantastic collaboration between Diego Ayala & team, Dadzie & team, Richard Durbin , Lizette Koekemoer & team, mara lawniczak & team, Dr Erica McAlister, eric ochomo & team, Fredros Okumu & team, Paaijmans & team, Tchouassi & team, Charles Wondji & team and Genomic Surveillance Unit. 8/8

For anyone that was having issues accessing the PDF yesterday it is working again now! 📄

people who say “why do we need [fine arts, humanities degrees, mid-budget films] when they don’t make a ton of money?” are insufferable. why do we need chrysanthemums? why do we need bonfires or baleen whales or the color blue? we just do. we just do.

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If you are a scientist or science-curious, I really recommend Bluesky (a) lots of scientists there, happily posting away (b) better/cleaner block function (c) no weird adds / timeline insertion of unwanted stuff. It's less newsy than here (though that might change)

And again some more because I dont even get notification from here and get heartburn within 3 posts (and 20 ads) whenever I have to open this app

And returning Fossil Festival veterans Jay & Petra Korlevic