Nice timing: Our paper on the Darwin's Finch genome is out today on Darwin's birthday

Birthday party for Darwin in 2009 Well, I assume this was on purpose from the folks at Biomed Central but not sure.  Our paper on the genome of one of Darwin's Finches is out today in BMC Genomics: BMC Genomics | Abstract | Insights into the evolution of Darwin's finches from comparative analysis of the Geospiza magnirostris genome sequence. There is a long long long story behind this paper.  Too long for me to write up right now.  I wrote up some of the story for a Figshare posting of the genome data last year. “Darwin’s Finches” are a model system for the study of various aspects of evolution and development.  In 2008 we commenced on a project to sequence the genomes of some of these species – inspired by the (then) upcoming celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin (which was in February 2009).  The project started with a brief discussion at the AGBT meeting in 2008 and then via an email conversation between Jonathan Eisen and Jason Affourtit about the possibility of a collaboration involving the 454 company (which was looking for projects to highlight the power of it’s then relatively new 454 sequencing machines).  After further discussions between Jonathan Eisen, his brother Michael Eisen (who separately had become interested in Darwin’s finches) and people from 454 it was decided that this was a potentially good project for a scientific and marketing collaboration.   In these conve...
Source: The Tree of Life - Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Source Type: blogs