Ensembl ASIA

I am now in the middle of a one-week trip in Japan to attend this conference.

I didn't know that if I access to the Ensembl here, I am automatically redirected to 'Ensembl ASIA'. Of course, the contents there are the same as what I normally see in Europe.

Guess what fish, frog and chicken have but we don't

The work I started in 2005 has just been published online.

Genome-wide Detection of Gene Extinction in Early Mammalian Evolution.
Kuraku S & Kuratani S.
Genome Biol Evol. 2011 Nov 17.

My team has been dealing with several examples of lineage-specific gene loss within vertebrates, including Hox14, Bmp16 and Pax4 . These are based on small-scale focus on selected examples of gene loss. The genome-wide assessment is the focus of the article just published. There I stick to gene loss in the early mammalian lineage. In addition to some gene loss already implicated by previous gene-level studies, I have identified many gene losses that require functional dissection.

There are still many questions to be addressed employing molecular phylogenetics.

I will move

It seems that I am still not allowed to say exactly where, but I am moving to a different place some time in February 2012.

Not simply because it is just my home, but also because of many other reasons, I decided to move to Japan.

It is a long story ...... which I can write here ...... maybe little by little.

Teaching Bioinformatics at High Schools

The journal PLoS Computational Biology published a series of articles about teaching bioinformatics at secondary schools.

This journal really likes article titles 'ten simple rules ...'

Coelacanth in Ensemble Pre!

Preliminary genome annotation for coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae), the 'living fossil', is viewable at the Ensembl Pre! website.

PAG XX Meeting

'PAG' is abbreviation of 'Plant Animal Genomics', the world's largest genomic meeting, always held in San Diego in January.

Japan Week in Frankfurt

There will be some events about Japanese culture etc. in Frankfurt, starting this weekend.