Dr. Weronika Danecka defended her PhD viva! Congratulations Weronika!!!

Thanks also to examiners Greg Kudla, Jane Usher, and André Gerber.

The Wellcome / Royal Society Fellowship that funded research in our group for 6 years, has now ended.

Edward has been appointed a Lecturer in RNA Systems Biology.

New music inspired by our work, The Fungi Sessions Vol.1.

This was a beautiful collaboration with musician Hannah Read, whose father Nick Read was a leading mycologist.

We wrote a review paper on the original definition of exon and its importance . Not all exons are protein-coding!!!

This was a lovely collaboration with Julie Aspden and Nicky Whiffin.

Mighty twitter thread explaining the paper (aka tweetorial).

Dr. Sam Haynes defended his PhD viva! Congratulations Sam!!! The first PhD student to graduate from the lab, a huge milestone, and a very nicely written PhD thesis. Thanks also to examiners Diego Oyarzun and Julien Gagneur.

Farewell Jing Qi Chong, who is moving on after doing a very nice Honours project analysing data on RNA-binding proteins.

Welcome to Eleanor Donohoe and Marcos Bermejo, who are both working on MSc Bioinformatics projects related to riboviz ribosome profiling data analysis.

Welcome to Domenico, who is joining us to work on a PhD project joint with Ken Sawin, looking at post-transcriptional control in filamentous fungi.

A new review paper on RNA-binding proteins and the fungal cell wall is now available at The Cell Surface.

The review was a lovely collaboration with Rebecca Hall at Kent.

Flic is leaving the lab after 2.5 years! Flic has worked on riboviz bioinformatics, directly supervised several student projects, taught data skills as a Carpentries instructor, including with Ed-DaSH.

Flic’s next step is a PhD studying research software practice at epcc. We will miss her, but she will not be far away.

Emma and Sophie are moving on, both to study for MSc in Bioinformatics. Emma and Sophie have had synchronized stints in the lab, first as honours project students, then as bioinformatics RAs working on riboviz.

Our preprint on 3’UTRs as modular regulators of gene expression is now on bioRxiv.

This twitter thread offers a quick introduction to the paper!

Our paper on Ssd1 structure and function is published at Nucleic Acids Research!.

The review process was rewarding, and led to some new experiments where we map a change in the RNA-binding site of the Ssd1 protein.

Our paper on choosing and using bioinformatics software is accepted at PLoS Computational Biology!

This was led by Dr. Mike Jackson from EPCC.

Welcome to: Louis Headley, a joint PhD student with Ramon Grima; Aphena Huang, Emma Mackenzie, Paddy Harker, and Sophie Winterbourne for their undergraduate honours projects.

Farewell to Jamie Auxillos, who is moving to a new postdoc position in Denmark!

Happy New Year! Our paper on evolution of the Ssd1 RNA-binding protein has been accepted!

This paper describes a change in protein function over evolutionary time: we show that ancestors of yeast Ssd1 were RNases related to Dis3L2, and that the nuclease activity has been lost repeatedly during fungal evolution.

New blogpost on research software, with the Software Sustainability Institute, especially the riboviz project.

We’re working on an open-source R package for qPCR analysis, built on tools from the tidyverse. Check out our fully documented code on tidyqpcr github .

Please try it, and get in touch with questions - we’re doing user interviews to find out what features people need, so you can volunteer for that too.

We have posted two new bioRxiv preprints about the Ssd1 RNA-binding protein.

One covers Ssd1 evolution.

The second addresses Ssd1 structure and function.

These both come out of a great collaboration with Atlanta Cook, also with Liz Ballou on evolution and conservation, and David Tollervey and Stefan Bresson on structure and function.

Now online: regulation of protein synthesis by start codons in Cryptococcus and other fungi!

We have multiple collaborative opportunities for PhD projects for October 2020 start!

So much has happened in the lab that we were distracted from updating the website!

We had great undegraduate honours students Savvas and Abhi.

Welcome to new lab members Flic, Liz, Weronika, and Marah!

We have multiple opportunities for PhD projects for October 2019 start!

Updated with a new big data and big experiments project, joint with Vicent Pelechano in Stockholm.

Details here.

Welcome new PhD student Sam Haynes!

Sam joins us from a degree in physics, having discovered an unusual young star for his masters’ project. Sam also completed an intensive Chinese language scholarship at Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Sam will be working on quantifying multi-omics data.

Welcome new post-doctoral research associate Dr. Laura Tuck!

Laura joins us having recently finished her PhD, and will be working on reporter gene systems in Cryptococcus neoformans.

Welcome new Darwin Trust scholarship undergraduate Aliaksandr Damenikan!

We are advertise a BBSRC/EASTBIO PhD project on Machine Learning of multi-omics data.

Update: this deadline has now passed, but please get in touch if you’re interested in PhD opportunities.

Details here.

Welcome new lab manager / post-doctoral research associate Dr. Rosey Bayne!

Rosey is an unusual polymath of a scientist, with decades of lab experience with diverse organisms, dozens of papers, and a MSc. from Edinburgh Napier University’s School of Computing. We’re very excited to have her on the team!

Applications are invited for an enthusiastic and motivated experimental biologist to join the Wallace group at Edinburgh’s Institute for Cell Biology. The group’s research is at the intersection of RNA biology, systems biology, and fungal pathogenesis, with heavy use of high-throughput sequencing and increasing use of synthetic biology. Applicants should have a PhD or relevant experience.

Application and more details here.

Update: this position has been filled. If you’re interested in working with us, send an email!

New lab website is being set up!