Conservation of Genetics
17/11/09 09:52
I’m pleased to see my obsessive relationship with Tajima’s D coming to fruition: my paper will come out in Evolution in the next few months, indicating that despite our tendency to assume a data set is neutral until proven otherwise, the average mitochondrial data set does not behave the way this test of neutrality indicates it should. On the whole, there is a strong bias for negative values of Tajima’s D, suggesting we may need to re-think our nulls in evolutionary biology. However, it makes me nervous to put too much faith in this one analysis of one locus of course! Driving home from Asheville the other day I got very nervous that the effect noted in this paper: what if it is an effect of how researchers curate their data into NCBI? When I got home I checked, and there is a small “curation effect” but I think the biological effect is still strong. Hard to be confident when there are so many factors involved.
In other news, I’ve recognized just what a valuable resource is building up in my -80° freezer: several studies’ worth of DNA isolates, from seastars, isopods, barnacles, fishes, and so on. I’ve had a tendency to try and answer a question (grabbing new samples) and move on; but there is a lot more work to be done on all of those DNA samples. It was hard to get them, they are valuable, right?! So my next rotation student should expect to hear the question: “What do you want to do with all the DNA in my freezer?”
In other news, I’ve recognized just what a valuable resource is building up in my -80° freezer: several studies’ worth of DNA isolates, from seastars, isopods, barnacles, fishes, and so on. I’ve had a tendency to try and answer a question (grabbing new samples) and move on; but there is a lot more work to be done on all of those DNA samples. It was hard to get them, they are valuable, right?! So my next rotation student should expect to hear the question: “What do you want to do with all the DNA in my freezer?”