December 2016

Alumnus Tom Hill received one of the prestigious excellence awards for outstanding dissertations, bestowed by the Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy, for his thesis entitled "Hybrid dysgenesis in Drosophila simulans, caused by a rapid global invasion of the P-element". Congratulations!

December 2016

On December 2nd we met for this year's Xmas event. Everyone acted as Secret Santa mug-painter for a colleague, followed by dinner at a microbrewery. We’ll swap the creative and beautiful ceramic mugs during a get-together before the Christmas break.

November 2016

Congratulations to postdoc Kathrin Otte for her DFG research fellowship entitled "Evolution of the Drosophila simulans proteome in response to adaptation to a novel temperature environment".

November 2016

New publication in Heredity: S. Franssen, R. Kofler and C. Schlötterer: "Uncovering the genetic signature of quantitative trait evolution with replicated time series data". Link to publication

November 2016

Our institute won both categories (age classes below/above 35) for this year's ranking of highest citation numbers at non-clinical institutes of the University! Congratulations to Susanne Franssen and Christian Schlötterer! Link to news

November 2016

80 international participants at the "Mind The Gap 5" meeting, organised by our PhD students. Link to event

October 2016

Congratulations to Ágnes Jónás on her successful PhD thesis defense: "Inferring evolutionary trajectories from time series data". 

October 2016

"Reconstruction of haplotype-blocks selected during experimental evolution" explained by S. Franssen, N. Barton and C. Schlötterer in Molecular Biology and Evolution. Link to publication

October 2016

This year's retreat led us to Altaussee for talks, networking and socialising. Link to group foto

October 2016

Congratulations to our PhD student Juraj Bergmann for receiving Erasmus and Vetmeduni grants for a 6-month research stay at the University of Sussex.

October 2016

"A novel method for quantifying the rate of embryogenesis uncovers considerable genetic variation for the duration of embryonic development in Drosophila melanogaster" by B. Horvath, A.J. Betancourt and A.T. Kalinka is now online at BMC Evolutionary Biology. Link to publication

September 2016

We're sad to see group leader Andrea Betancourt leave but wish her all the best for her next career step at the Institute of Integrative Biology at University of Liverpool.

September 2016

Congratulations to our student Benjamin Fürnsinn who successfully passed the final exam of the Bachelor's Programme in Biomedicine and Biotechnology with the highest grade possible.

September 2016

"Suitability of Different Mapping Algorithms for Genome-wide Polymorphism Scans with Pool-Seq Data" by R. Kofler, A.M. Langmüller, P. Nouhaud, K.A. Otte and C. Schlötterer: now online in G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics. Link to publication

September 2016

An intense month at the population genetics introductory course for our new PhD students, and guest ESRs from the BINGO training network, from Austria, Germany, Portugal and Greece. Read more
Link to course

September 2016

"Ancestral population reconstitution from isofemale lines as a tool for experimental evolution" by P. Nouhaud, R. Tobler, V. Nolte and C. Schlötterer is now online in Ecology and Evolution. Link to publication

August 2016

Genetics recently accepted "Estimating the effective population size from temporal allele frequency changes in experimental evolution" by A. Jónás, T. Taus, C. Kosiol, C. Schlötterer and A. Futschik. Link to publication

August 2016

"PoPoolationTE2: Comparative Population Genomics of Transposable Elements Using Pool-Seq" by R. Kofler, D. Gómez-Sánchez and C. Schlötterer was accepted by Molecular Biology and Evolution. Link to publication

July 2016

PhD students of the Vienna Graduate School of Population Genetics taught 10-12 year old, curious mini-investigators about evolution and fruit flies in an outreach effort at "Kinderuni".

July 2016

D. Schrempf and C. Kosiol are part of the collaborative paper "Reversible polymorphism-aware phylogenetic models and their application to tree inference", recently published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology. Link to publication

July 2016

A.M. Jakšić and C. Schlötterer pulished a study about "The interplay of temperature and genotype on patterns of alternative splicing in Drosophila melanogaster" in Genetics. Link to publication

July 2016

"Improved versions of common estimators of the recombination rate" by K. Gärtner and A. Futschik is now online in the Journal of Computational Biology.

June 2016

Congratulations to our PhD student Tom Hill! He successfully defended his thesis "Hybrid dysgenesis in Drosophila simulans, caused by a rapid global invasion of the P-element". Good luck for your next career step as Postdoc in the US!

June 2016

"Inference of adaptive gene expression by experimental evolution" was funded by the FWF. Link to grants

May 2016

The 5th edition of the MIND THE GAP meeting is this year organised by students of the Vienna Graduate School of Population Genetics, registration is now open: link to meeting website

April 2016

The yearly SAB (Scientific Advisory Board) meeting was concluded by a Mini-Symposium on April 27, featuring talks by Nick Barton, Brian Charlesworth, Andy Clark, and Jean-Michel Gibert.

March 2016

Welcome to two new group leaders! Kirsten Senti (website coming up, soon) will add a a wealth of expertise in functional genetics including CRISPR/Cas9 mutagenesis. His research interest focuses on the battle between transposable elements and their control by the piRNA pathway.

Congratulations also to Robert Kofler. Robert advanced to group leader after the FWF granted his project "Optimizing novel methods for dissecting complex traits".

February 2016

Congratulations to our former graduate student Raymond Tobler. Ray is currently lead postdoc researcher on the Aboriginal Heritage Project, a collaboration between the Australian Centre of Ancient DNA (ACAD) and the South Australian Museum (SAM), which aims to reconstruct the genetic history of Aboriginal Australia. Ray was recently awarded an Indigenous Discovery Fellowship that will enable his group to further extend the phylogenetic analyses and study paleo-demography and adaptation.

January 2016

Congratulations to PhD student Dominik Schrempf for a Visiting Grant at Aarhus University!