Welcome to the web home of the Stoltzfus research group at The Institute Formerly Known as CARB.

About Us

The Computational and Analytical Molecular Evolution Lab (camel) is the home of the Stoltzfus group at IBBR.  We use our minds and our computers to address issues in evolutionary genetics, molecular evolution, and bioinformatics.  We are especially interested in one particular scientific challenge, which is to understand the role of mutation as an evolutionary cause, and one particular techological (in some respects) challenge, which is to improve the interoperability of software and data resources used by evolutionary researchers

Parallelism and Loss in the Evolution of Origin-Fixation Models

Posted Mon, 11/21/2011 - 13:12 by arlin

Since the "molecular revolution" of 1968-1971, evolutionary geneticists have become increasingly familiar with models that treat evolution as a series of events with origin-fixation dynamics, characterized by multiplying a rate of origin and a probability of fixation.  For instance, this conceptions leads to the familiar approximation of k = 2Nu * 2s = 4Nus for the rate of evolution by selective fixation of beneficial mutations.  This type of model is widely used in molecular evolution, including phylogenetic analysis software that uses codon-based models, and more recently has been explored in the form of  so-called "mutational landscape" models of adaptation.  

HIP (Hackathons, Interoperability, Phylogenetics) working group starting up

Posted Fri, 11/11/2011 - 14:53 by arlin

Hackathons, Interoperability, Phylogenetics (HIP), a new NESCent working group, envision the future as a virtual phyloinformatics bazaar in which comparative data and phylogenies are saved, shared, annotated, liked, re-used, aggregated, mashed up, and linked in.  In pursuit of this vision, the working group will stage a series of hackathons (intensive participant-driven code-development meetings) that empower early-career scientists to build the links of an emerging network of interoperable evolutionary resources. 

The HIP proposal (with my collaborators Enrico Pontelli and Rutger Vos) was funded early this year.  In the fall we recruited an awesome 10-member Leadership Team that will giude the project over the next two years.  Currently the team is having monthly teleconference, leading up to a face-to-face meeting at NESCent in mid-January, 2012, where we will flesh out our Grand Plan and begin organizing our first hackathon, to take place at NESCent. To find out more about the project, go to the HIP wiki (which has the original proposal) or ask Arlin. 

 

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