Lecture Title: TBD

Postdoctoral Research Associate, Baum lab, UCL, 2015-2020
Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow, 2017-2018
PhD 2015, Chemical and Systems Biology, Stanford University
MSc 2009, National Centre for Biological Sciences

Lecture Title: TBD

Jana’s research focuses on beneficial interactions between eukaryotic microbes and bacterial symbionts, particularly those that affect the biogeochemical cycling of nitrogen.

Jana and her group study the ecological role, diversity and physiology of protist symbionts in groundwaters, freshwater lakes, and the ocean, using a variety of biogeochemical, molecular and imaging techniques, most notably fluorescent microscopy and nanoSIMS.

Jana received her PhD in 2011 from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Bremen, Germany. Since 2018, she has been heading the research group ‘Greenhouse Gases’ there.

Lecture Title: TBD

Education

• PhD, Dalhousie University

Academic Positions

• Department member since 2001
• CGEB Founding Director, Institute for Comparative Genomics (ICG)
• Canada Research Chair in Comparative Genomics

Research Topics

Genome, Organelle and Protein Evolution

Research:
Determining the "super-kingdoms" of eukaryotic organisms by phylogenomics.

Using genomic surveys and molecular genetic methods, we isolate genes coding for multiple highly conserved proteins (ribosomal proteins, cpn60, hsp70 and hsp90, elongation factors, tubulins, RNA polymerases etc.) from diverse aerobic and anaerobic, parasitic and free-living protists. We do computer-based phylogenetic analyses of these sequences to: reconstruct ancient relationships amongst the unicellular protistan eukaryotes and other major eukaryotic groups. In particular we are investigating a hypothetical eukaryote super-kingdom called the 'Excavata' that is proposed to contain organisms such as Giardia, Trichomonas, trypanosomes and a variety of aerobic and anaerobic flagellates and amoebae.

Comparative genomics of unicellular eukaryotes

Through EST surveys, we characterize the highly expressed genes from a wide variety of protistan genomes. We are specifically interested in the gene content of anaerobic protists, that have acquired genes by lateral gene transfer (LGT) from Eubacteria, Archaebacteria and Eukaryotes. By studying LGT in these organisms we are gaining an understanding of how both parasitic and free-living unicellular eukaryotic genomes change over time.

The biology and evolution of mitochondria, hydrogenosomes and mitosomes

Mitochondria are derived from an ancient endosymbiosis of a eubacterium in eukaryotic cells. Although all known eukaryotes appear to have diverged from each other since this event, many unicellular eukaryotes that live in oxygen-poor habitats (e.g. the human gut or anoxic fresh-water environments) lack aerobic mitochondrial functions and instead have transformed their mitochondria into hydrogen-producing 'hydrogenosomes or reduced mitosomes. We are interested in characterizing the functional biodiversity of these alternatives to mitochondria and understanding the mechanisms by which they have evolved.

Modeling the evolution of genes and genomes

We collaborate extensively with statisticians and computer scientists to develop stochastic models of gene, protein and genome evolution. We are particularly interested in creating models that capture the dynamic nature of molecular evolution over the 3.5 billion years of divergence in the tree of life.

Keywords:

DNA-sequencing, phylogenetic methods, bioinformatics, computational biology, immunofluorescence, comparative genomics

Lecture Title: TBD

Research Fellow, American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), New York (2012-2013)

• Research Associate, Princeton University, Dept. of Ecology & Evolution (2000-2002)
• Director, Cetacean Research Institute of UOU (2005- 2012)
• Dean, Office of External Cooperation, UOU (2015-2017)
• President, The Korean Society of Protistologists (2016-2017)
• Subject Editor of Protist, Zootaxa (mega journal of animal taxonomy) (2016-present)

Lecture Title: TBD

Shuhai Xiao is a paleobiologist and geobiologist who studies the interactions between the biosphere and its environments at critical transitions in Earth history, particularly during the Ediacaran-Cambrian transition. He integrates paleobiological, sedimentological, and geochemical data to shed light on important evolutionary events (such as the origin and diversification of eukaryotes, multicellular organisms, and animals), their environmental contexts, and their geobiological consequences.