PROGRAM DAY 1 (June 25th)
09.15-10.00: Impacts of human exploitation investigated through archaeogenomics
Bastiaan Star, CEES, Dept. of Biosciences (IBV), University of Oslo, Norway.
Abstract: Recent improvements in ancient DNA (aDNA) and high-throughput sequencing have revolutionized our ability to test hypotheses on ecological and evolutionary change over decadal to millennial time scales. Here, I present insights from genomic data on patterns of past exploitation for several non-model marine species, resolving long-standing debates on the extent of human impacts on these species.
10.15-11.00 The microbial ecology of the soil and the Earth’s "Critical Zone"
Emma Aronson, Dept. of Microbiology and Plant Pathology, University of California, Riverside, USA
Abstract: The "Critical Zone" of the Earth is the biologically active layer that extends from the tallest tree to the lowest groundwater, which is studied in the US at the Critical Zone Observatory (CZO) Network. In a coordinated effort, I led over 100 researchers to plan, execute, and analyze a comparison of the microbial communities and environment of shallow and deep soils from 20 different sites, including 2 soil pits dug at each CZO. We used a combination of amplicon and metagenomic sequencing, with associated gene and genome assembly. From this sample set we are beginning to unravel connections between soil depth, environmental parameters, and the diversity and activity of the microbial community.
11.15-12.00 How to start your message – deconstructing translation initiation
Eivind Valen, Computational Biology Unit (CBU) and Sars Centre, University of Bergen, Norway
Abstract: For eukaryotes, the number of ribosomes synthesizing a given protein depends on how many are recruited to its mRNA, their success in navigating its 5’ untranslated region (UTR) and whether they recognize its start codon. Initiation of translation is a rate limiting step in protein synthesis and key to gene expression control, but despite this centrality it remains poorly understood. In this talk, I will introduce a method to capture the transcriptome-wide occupancy of scanning, initiating, elongating and terminating ribosome complexes to track these across all transcripts. This enables us to deconstruct the regulatory contributions from the three stages of initiation: ribosome recruitment, scanning of the 5’ UTR and recognition of the start codon and identify key regulatory mechanisms at each step. Our results provides the first view of global dynamics of translation initiation in a vertebrate.