Thu 30 Jan 14:00: Is the bacterial accessory genome adaptive? Host - Kate Baker
Bacterial genomes vary in sequence due to mutations, but also vary in their gene content and order due to horizontal gene transfer. Whether the variation in gene content and order, known as the accessory genome, is typically neutral, nearly neutral or adaptive is still the subject of debate – different theoretical arguments support all three scenarios. The availability of large sample collections across many thousands of bacterial species offers the opportunity to bring data to bear on this question. I will first present methods being developed in my group to make it possible to analyse collections of millions of genomes. Using these approaches, I will then show how a mechanistic model of gene gain and loss can be fitted to different pathogen species to determine whether their accessory genome shows signals of adaptation. Finally, I will show how transformer-based AI architectures can learn gene content and ordering across even more species, giving another way to look at this problem. So, is the bacterial accessory genome adaptive? A short answer would be ‘it depends’. Come to the talk to find out what it depends on.
Host - Kate Baker
- Speaker: Dr John Lees from EMBL – EBI, Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton
- Thursday 30 January 2025, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: Biffen Lecture theatre and Zoom.
- Series: Genetics Seminar ; organiser: Caroline Newnham.
Thu 30 Jan 14:00: Is the bacterial accessory genome adaptive? Host - Kate Baker
Abstract not available
Host - Kate Baker
- Speaker: Dr John Lees from EMBL – EBI, Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton
- Thursday 30 January 2025, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: Biffen Lecture theatre and Zoom.
- Series: Genetics Seminar ; organiser: Caroline Newnham.
Thu 12 Dec 16:00: 'An indirect way of detecting viruses: MDA5 guards against infection by surveying cellular RNA homeostasis'
This Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar will take place on Thursday 12 December 2024, starting at 4:00pm, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)
Speaker: Jan Rehwinkel, Professor of Innate Immunology, MRC Human Immunology Unit and MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of Oxford
Title: ‘An indirect way of detecting viruses: MDA5 guards against infection by surveying cellular RNA homeostasis’
Host: Yorgo Modis, CITIID , Department of Medicine
Refreshments will be available following the seminar.
- Speaker: Jan Rehwinkel, Professor of Innate Immunology, University of Oxford
- Thursday 12 December 2024, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Series: Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar Series; organiser: Ruth Paton.