December 2022 Newsletter
Dear sed-DNA enthusiasts,
This is the last newsletter of 2022. A year full of good news and some sadness for DNA society.
The passing of Sarah Crump hit like a hammer. It prompted a large number of messages from society members. We compiled these messages and they are displayed on a page specially dedicated to Sarah and her research. There is also information on the "Sarah Crump Graduate Fellowship Fund"
To end the year in a postive note, we are happy to highlight that Ines Angeles Barrenechea, a member of the student board, successfully defended her PhD this month, congratulations!
Finally, we will have one more society e-coffee this year, Wednesday the 7th of December at 09:00 (UTC+2). Everyone is welcome to join Gathertown for a digital coffee and social chatting. Calendar invites will be sent a few days before via the email list and the society slack channel.
We wish everyone already Happy Holidays, and all the best for the New year both scientifically and personally. Looking forward to what 2023 will bring, and meeting many of you in person.
December Pacific society seminar
More information on the seminar series will follow.
New papers
Jifeng Zhang et al., (2022) published "Ancient DNA reveals potentially toxic cyanobacteria increasing with climate change" in Water Research.
Commentary papers
Joshua H. Miller & Carl Simpson (2022) published "When did mammoths go extinct?" in Nature.
Yucheng Wang et al., (2022) published "Reply to: When did mammoths go extinct?" in Nature.
Preprints
Yi Wang (2022) made the preprint "Spatial distribution of sedimentary DNA is taxon-specific and linked to local occurrence at intra-lake scale" available at Research Square.
New Positions
A three year phd position funded by the NOAA Graduate Assistantship (Ph.D.) in the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Toledo is available. The graduate researcher will work with Assistant Professor, Dr. Trisha Spanbauer , to investigate the role of phytoplankton in silica and carbon cycling in the Western Basin of Lake Erie over a range of temporal scales ranging from diurnal to centennial. The successful candidate will develop ancient environmental DNA (aeDNA) datasets from sediments recovered from Lake Erie and evaluate the relationship between major biogeochemical cycles and phytoplankton community dynamics. Other duties will include processing large datasets, mentoring undergraduate students, preparing manuscripts for publication, and delivering presentations at scientific meetings. The start date is May or August 2023. Please send a statement of research interests, unofficial transcripts, and CV to Trisha Spanbauer (trisha.spanbauer@utoledo.edu) by Jan 15, 2023 , for full consideration. Please put 'Interest in NOAA-funded Graduate Assistantship' in the subject line.
A two-year Post-Doctoral fellowship is available in the field of southern African archaeology and ancient DNA, to be hosted by the Centre for Microbial Ecology and Genomics at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. The candidate will analyse shotgun metagenomic datasets generated from the sequencing of sedimentary and other ancient samples derived from southern African archaeological contexts, spanning the Holocene and Late Pleistocene epochs. In general terms, the candidate will explore whether molecular (sedaDNA) analyses could provide insight into ancient African human ecology. More specifically, the candidate will aim to detect traces ancient human bacterial and viral pathogens, and explore the evolutionary history of infectious diseases in prehistoric southern Africa. The ideal candidate will have a Ph.D. in bioinformatics or a closely related field, and demonstrate abilities to work both independently and in a team environment, with an emphasis on strong expertise in the molecular tools used in next-generation sequencing and population genomics. The candidate should have background in molecular biology, particularly in molecular methods for generating large-scale sequence and SNP datasets, and be familiar with basic concepts in computational science and optionally, with Bash or other programming languages such as R, Perl and or Python. Experience in the analysis of ancient DNA and/or Next-Generation Sequencing will be considered positively. Expressions of interest must be submitted electronically to riaanrifkin@gmail.com . Please include the following: (1) A Curriculum Vitae (with publication record, if any), (2) A Letter of Motivation of no longer than two pages, and (3) Contact details of two professional references. Our review of submitted expressions of interest will continue until the position is filled. The appointment is expected to commence in January 2023.
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.