News

Escape to the country

Academics and researchers from GEE and the Natural History Museum escape the city heat for their biennial retreat to the countryside for a day and half of scientific talks.  This year the retreat at Missenden Abbey in the Chiltern Hills, was held in conjunction with the Natural History Museum and provided the perfect backdrop for researchers to network and develop collaborations and links between the two institutions.

Published: Apr 23, 2018 10:49:07 AM

Bumper NERC and BBSRC grant applications success in GEE

GEE PIs celebrate recent grant application successes.

Published: Apr 23, 2018 10:44:45 AM

Congratulations to Dr Adam Dobson on his paper in Aging and Mechanisms of Disease!

Ageing human populations present a huge societal challenge, and provides motivation to find ways to improve health in old age. Dietary restriction (DR), is one way to improve late-life health of animals from worms to mammals, and perhaps humans. This effect was first observed over 80 years ago, but the underlying mechanism has proven elusive. In this study, gene expression was profiled in diverse tissues of flies subjected to DR, and from these results a role for proteins called GATA transcription factors was predicted. Reducing expression of GATA transcription factors altered the effect of diet on lifespan, and targeting this knockdown to specific tissues reduced side-effects commonly associated with longevity. Therefore this study predicts that targeting GATA transcription factors in specific tissues may promote the benefits, but not costs, of DR.

Published: Apr 18, 2018 2:03:29 PM

Professor Sam Berry (26 October 1934 – 29 March 2018)

With sadness we note the passing of Professor R J (Sam) Berry, who was the Professor of Genetics at UCL (from 1974) and an active member of the Genetics, Evolution and Environment Department up to the present, and a massive figure in evolutionary and ecological genetics, biodiversity and conservation biology. He was also a leading Christian and wrote extensively on science and religion. We will miss him greatly.
Andrew Pomiankowski

Obituaries: 
The National Biodiversity Network
The John Ray Initiative
A Rocha International

Published: Apr 5, 2018 9:37:44 AM

New study by the Balloux lab tracks emergence and a worldwide spread of a drug-resistant mcr-1 gene

The study, published in Nature Communications, found that the mcr-1 gene, now present across the globe, can be tracked to a single event around 2005 when it moved from pigs into pathogens that affect humans.

Published: Mar 29, 2018 4:51:15 PM