October 2022 Newsletter
Dear sed-DNA enthusiasts,
Autumn in the northern hemisphere is in full progress, as well as the society with another productive and special month. We would like to congratulate Svante Pääbo on winning the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his groundbreaking research on ancient DNA, paleogenomics and human evolution.
Secondly, we will restart the society e-coffee starting next week Wednesday the 12th of October at 09:00 (UTC+2) and Wednesday the 26th at 16:00 (UTC+2) to stimulate interaction between members of the society. Everyone is welcome to join in gathertown for a digital coffee and social chatting. Calendar invites will be send!
October Pacific society seminar
More information on the seminar series will follow.
New papers
Linda Armbrecht et al., (2022) published "Ancient marine sediment DNA reveals diatom transition in Antarctica " in nature communications.
Inger Greve Alsos et al., (2022) published "Postglacial species arrival and diversity buildup of northern ecosystems took millennia" in Science Advances.
Barbara von Hippel et al., (2022) published "Long-term fungus–plant covariation from multi-site sedimentary ancient DNA metabarcoding" in Quaternary Science Reviews.
Anneke ter Schure et al., (2022) published "Sedimentary ancient DNA metabarcoding as a tool for assessing prehistoric plant use at the Upper Paleolithic cave site Aghitu-3, Armenia" in Journal of Human Evolution.
Frederik V. Seersholm et al., (2022) published "Ancient DNA provides insights into 4,000 years of resource economy across Greenland" in nture human behaviour .
Preprints
Boris K. Biskaborn (2022) made the preprint "Diatom responses and geochemical feedbacks to environmental changes at Lake Rauchuagytgyn (Far East Russian Arctic)" available at egusphere.
New Positions
A PhD position on the influence of palaeo-climatic changes on Southern Ocean biodiversity at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS), University of Tasmania, Australia. The project will focus on (1) developing bioinformatic approaches for analysing and validating metagenomic sedaDNA, and (2) reconstructing millennia-scale records of biodiversity presence at key sites in the Southern Ocean and placing these into context with palaeoclimatic records to identify key environmental drivers associated with shifts in biodiversity. Application deadline 10th of October 2022 . klick here for more information
A PhD position on the Probing ancient Antarctic krill populations at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS), University of Tasmania, Australia.This research will build on these already existing sedaDNA techniques and target Antarctic krill specifically. The latter will be achieved by applying an RNA based hybridisation-capture technique, a method that has been commonly used in ancient DNA research to capture very degraded and fragmented sequences. The capture approach will target krill for the first time, to investigate their dynamics over thousands of years. Application deadline 15th of October 2022. klick here for more information
A 3-year PhD position on the diversity, paleoecology and evolution of Cyanobacteria inAntarctic lakes at the University of Liège, in the group of Annick Wilmotte . The students will use fossil DNA in selected lake sediments and develop molecular phylogenies of focal cyanobacterial taxa to study the processes that contributed to the present-day diversity of microorganisms and invertebrates in Antarctic lakes. The processes studied include the long-term persistence of biota in glacial refugia, and extinction, colonization, diversification and biological succession in response to past climate and environmental changes. For more information, please contact Annick Wilmotte (awilmotte@uliege.be) Application deadline 10th of October 2022
A 4-year post-doctoral position (UM) is available, focused on analyzing archaeological sediments and speleothems in the framework of the ERC St G project “MicroStratDNA” Reconstructing Paleolithic Population Dynamics Using Microstratified Paleogenomics” by M. Stahlschmidt and in collaboration with the Pinhasi Lab at the University of Vienna. MicroStratDNA is positioned at the intersection of geoarchaeology and archaeogenomics and concerned with the formation history of environmental sources of DNA pertaining to archaeological questions and with a focus on human aDNA. Application deadline 15th of October 2022. More information
A Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Paleogenomics/sedaDNA is available as part of a highly interdisciplinary and collaborative project funded by a new 4-year National Science Foundation Understanding the Rules of Life - Emergent Networks award. The project will study Late Pleistocene-Holocene climate change in Southeast Alaska, focusing on rapid warming events following the last glacial maximum. We are a project team of two biology and two geology professors at the University at Buffalo with expertise in the topic and region of study. The Research Fellowship is anticipated to start February, 2023, and be for 2 years with possibility for extension. For more information, please contact Charlotte Lindqvist (cl243@buffalo.edu) and see here
Contact me at kevin_nota@eva.mpg.de or sedimentarydna@gmail.com if you want to announce something to the society, or if you have a recent paper that you would like to advertise in the newsletter.