Seminars

evolVienna events

March 2012: Thomas Flatt spending three months at Wiko Berlin

Faculty member Thomas Flatt is invited to spend March, April and May at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, also known as the Institute for Advanced Study Berlin. The Wiko is one of the academic institutions that see their model in the famous Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton with Albert Einstein being its best-known fellow. The goal of such an Institute for Advanced Study is to offer outstanding international scientists the opportunity to concentrate on their chosen research projects and to absorb ideas and inspirations from other disciplines. Thomas will investigate the impact of hormonal mechanisms on  phenotypic plasticity during his stay in Berlin.

read more here

February 2012: third ERC grant for our faculty!

We're happy to announce that speaker Christian Schlötterer was recently awarded with the prestigious ERC Advanced Grant 2012. With this award the Vienna Graduate School of Population Genetics now unites three ERC grants among its faculty! After a Starting Grant for Alistair McGregor (2008) and an Advanced Grant for Magnus Nordborg (2011), Christian Schlötterer will use the five-year grant to investigate the adaptation skills of fruit flies to changed temperature environments.

In the light of global climate change, experimental evolution in the lab on a complex organism like Drosophila will yield important evolutionary insights. Based on next-generation sequencing techniques of adapting fly populations, the challenging immense datasets on DNA, RNA and phenotype variations will be jointly analysed and interpreted by members of the Vienna Graduate School of Population Genetics, ranging from statisticians and mathematicians to biologists and bioinformaticians. The long-term goal of the planned experimental evolution project is to explain why natural populations are so diverse and how many genes need to be changed for animals to be successful in a new environment.

January 2012: Guest professor

Research assistant professor Christopher Willett investigates the nature of genetic variation that underlies speciation and adaptation at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In collaboration with members of the Vienna Graduate School of Population Genetics, he will address questions about early stages of speciation and the evolution of thermal adaptation in copepods as a model system.

Chris Willett

"Working with the group of Christian Schlötterer will provide me with a great opportunity to learn cutting edge techniques of whole-genome genetic analysis and apply these techniques to the system on which I work", says Chris. In terms of speciation he is using this copepod system to study the genes that interact deleteriously to generate postzygotic reproductive isolation. He also looks at thermal tolerance and its potential interactions with reproductive isolation. He will work with us from January to August 2012.

Chris' website

January 2012: Visiting Scientist

Dr. Martin Schäfer, postdoc at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies (University of Zurich), will continue his collaboration with PopGen Vienna (Schlötterer lab) in from January until the end of February:

Martin Schäfer

"My research focuses primarily on evolutionary ecology and population genetics. I am particularly interested in how sexual selection, drift and gene flow interact and contribute to phenotypic and genetic divergence between lineages. In order to approach these questions I use a variety of methods including fitness experiments in the laboratory, quantitative genetics as well as molecular tools. During my stay at the host institute I will be investigating the evolutionary diversification of male accessory gland proteins (Acps) in multiple Drosophila melanogaster populations. By comparing ancestral and derived (cosmopolitan) populations, we aim to get insights into evolutionary dynamics underlying this class of genes at the stages of differentiation before reproductive isolation has evolved."

December 2011: Christmas Event

Students, faculty and associated members enjoyed a Christmas outing on December 14. Several Popgen skaters hit the ice to prepare the grounds for the tastiest burgers in town. As an interesting and usful side effect we witnessed some successful team building between beginners and more experienced skaters who had an equally good time!

November 2011: Links with partner programs

We're happy to have established friendly ties with three partner PhD programs across Europe. Student exchange, mutual course participation and student networking is planned with GENECO in Sweden (Lund), EESLMU in Germany (Munich) and the Finnish Population Genetics Doctoral Program (Oulu, Helsinki, Turku).

news archive

from October 2011: Fulbright Scholar Bryant McAllister

We're happy to announce that Bryant McAllister, Associate Professor at the Department of Biology (University of Iowa), decided to spend his Fulbright sabbatical at The Vienna Graduate School of Population Genetics. Bryant was nominated for the prestigious Scholarship by the Austrian-American Educational Commission of the J. William Fulbright Scholarship Board in Washington D.C.

Bryant McAllister

From October 2011 until end of January 2012, Bryant will investigate evolutionary consequences of sexual reproduction and interact with our PhD students through discussions and lectures.

Brian's website

October 2011: faculty meeting

The second DK faculty meeting took place on October 18.

from October 2011: Visiting scientist

From October 2011 until the end of the year, Dr. Chantal Dauphin-Villemant (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Paris 6) stayed at PopGen Vienna for her collaboration with the Flatt group.

Chantal Dauphin-Villemant

In her research, Dr. Dauphin-Villemant investigates the biogenesis and endocrine function of steroid hormones; in both insects and vertebrates, steroid hormones play major roles in the control of development, reproduction, and aging. However, although steroid signaling is well conserved throughout evolution, the precise biosynthetic pathway that leads to insect steroids is still incompletely understood.

One of Dr. Dauphin-Villemant's major aims is to elucidate this metabolic pathway and to better understand the evolution of steroids. Her group has used biochemical approaches to measure insect steroid hormones with great sensitivity and has also been involved in the characterization of several enzymatic steps of this pathway. The insights from this work have improved the tools to understand the function of these hormones.

In collaboration with Thomas Flatt’s team, Chantal Dauphin-Villemant is presently interested in characterizing the steroidogenic function of Drosophila ovaries and in unravelling how ecdysteroid production affects longevity in female fruit flies.

October 2011: PhD retreat

The yearly retreat happened on October 14-16 at the mountain resort of Feuerkogel in Upper Austria. We welcomed 29 PhD students, postdocs and faculty of The Vienna Graduate School of Population Genetics as well as associate guests for research talks, brainstorming, hiking and socialising.

September 2011: Introductory course

The yearly Population Genetics Introductory Course for PhD students takes place daily during September and covers relevant basic concepts in population genetics, Drosophila genetics, statistics and bioinformatics. Our students also have the opportunity to attend the Evolutionary Genetics Workshop at IST Austria.

September 2011: 2nd DK Welcome Event

The Vienna Graduate School of Population Genetics welcomes five new students! This year's Popgen Welcome Event took take place on Friday, September 2. We explored the historic Bohemian Prater and concluded the afternoon with a traditional Viennese dinner to give our Newbies Anton, Derek, Vukasin, Hester and Mikhail the opportunity to meet their experienced fellow students in a pleasant and informal surrounding.

Meet all our students here

May 2011: Visiting Student

Bioinformatician Susanne Franssen is PhD student at the Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity (University of Münster, Germany). From May until the end of July she was hosted by PopGenVienna in Christian Schlötterer's group:

Susanne Franssen

"I am interested in microevolutionary processes in particular with respect to adaptation to abiotic stresses. As adaptive changes in organisms and populations are to a large extent detectable via changes in gene expression, RNA-seq experiments provide the opportunity to identify genes involved in adaptation to a specific environmental stressor with the appropriate experimental design. I am following this approach in the ecological key species Zostera marina (seagrass) and the model organism Drosophila melanogaster."

May 2011: Visiting Scientist

During May 2011, Dr. Sophie Marion de Proce, postdoc at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (University of Edinburgh) was hosted by the Vienna Graduate School of Population Genetics (Schlötterer group):

Sophie Marion de Proce

"During my PhD in molecular evolution in Edinburgh, I worked mainly on the evolution of non-coding DNA. I tested for patterns of natural selection in introns in Drosophila, to test hypotheses about which categories of introns were most subject to selection. I am now working as a Postdoc to investigate whether the X chromosome and the autosomes evolve differently. Using a D. pseudoobscura polymorphism dataset, we expect to observe more evidence for positive selection and faster evolutionary rates on the X chromosome. This would imply that beneficial mutations are at least partially recessive and arising from new mutations.

I am currently visiting the Institute of Population Genetics to collaborate with Christian Schlötterer's group on obtaining a genome sequence for D. affinis, in order to use it as divergence data for our D. pseudoobscura dataset."

May 2011: NGS workshop

The Vienna Graduate School of Population Genetics hosted a next generation sequencing (NGS) workshop funded by the Thermadapt programme of the European Science Foundation. It took place from May 23 to 27, 2011 at the Vetmeduni Vienna, Austria.

Scientists from different fields, ranging from phylogenetics to medical research, rely increasingly on large amounts of sequence data. As this can pose a major challenge to researchers, the goal of the workshop was to intensively train the participants in the required fields needed to analyse next-generation sequencing data. The workshop featured daily lectures in the morning followed by exercises in the afternoon.

The 28 participants from all over Europe gave very positive feedback about the workshop's content and organisation.

May 2011: Book "Mechanisms of Life History Evolution"

PopGen Vienna faculty member Thomas Flatt is the co-editor of a new book entitled "Mechanisms of Life History Evolution".
Details can be found here.

April 2011: PhD selection 2011 completed

Popgen Vienna welcomes five new students
Also this year we received about 100 applications from all over the world. After intense interviewing rounds with the most promising candidates we offered five positions. Our new students will start with their projects after Summer. We happily welcome them!

April 2011: Visiting Scientist

Dr. Martin Schäfer, postdoc at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies (University of Zurich), visited PopGen Vienna (Schlötterer lab) in spring of 2011:

Martin Schäfer

"My research focuses primarily on evolutionary ecology and population genetics. I am particularly interested in how sexual selection, drift and gene flow interact and contribute to phenotypic and genetic divergence between lineages. In order to approach these questions I use a variety of methods including fitness experiments in the laboratory, quantitative genetics as well as molecular tools. During my stay at the host institute I will be investigating the evolutionary diversification of male accessory gland proteins (Acps) in multiple Drosophila melanogaster populations. By comparing ancestral and derived (cosmopolitan) populations, we aim to get insights into evolutionary dynamics underlying this class of genes at the stages of differentiation before reproductive isolation has evolved."

January 2011: DK faculty meeting

The faculty convened for a first faculty meeting on January 25.

January 2011: DK Foosball Event

On 14th January PhD students, postdocs and staff met for a challenging match to inaugurate the brand new PopGen Foosball Table.

January 2011: Visiting Scientist

From January 2011, Dr. Patricia Moore (Associate Professor in Evolution and Development, University of Exeter) is hosted by The Vienna Graduate School of Population Genetics.

A fundamental challenge for research in biodiversity during this critical period of climate change is to understand how organisms respond, in both the short- and long-term, to stressful environments.  Altering reproduction is one response to stressful environments, increasing an individual’s chance of survival by sacrificing the number of offspring produced.  The decision to reproduce or not under stressful conditions has been addressed in the past either in a mechanistic or ecological perspective.

Dr. Trish Moore’s research focuses how the environment affects female reproductive potential.  She investigates the evolutionary outcome of changes in the female reproductive system, the conserved physiological mechanism of oocyte apoptosis, and the role of genetics in individual variation in female fertility and response to environmental stress.

In collaboration with Dr. Thomas Flatt’s team, Dr. Moore will take a novel, integrative approach to exploring the role of reproduction in ameliorating environmental stress, using molecular genetic techniques required to study physiological mechanisms underlying life trade-offs in Drosophila. 

December 2010: DK X-mas walk

Students met for a walk through the seasonally decorated inner city.

October 2010: Introductory course

The yearly Population Genetics Introductory Course for PhD students took place in October and covered relevant basic concepts in population genetics, Drosophila genetics, statistics and bioinformatics. Our students also had the opportunity to attend the Evolutionary Genetics Workshop at IST Austria.

October 2010: Visiting scientist

Until the end of 2010, Dr. Chantal Dauphin-Villemant (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Paris 6) was hosted by the graduate school as a visiting researcher in the Flatt group.

In her research, Dr. Dauphin-Villemant investigates the biogenesis and endocrine function of steroid hormones; in both insects and vertebrates, steroid hormones play major roles in the control of development, reproduction, and aging. However, although steroid signaling is well conserved throughout evolution, the precise biosynthetic pathway that leads to insect steroids is still incompletely understood.

One of Dr. Dauphin-Villemant's major aims is to elucidate this metabolic pathway and to better understand the evolution of steroids. Her group has used biochemical approaches to measure insect steroid hormones with great sensitivity and has also been involved in the characterization of several enzymatic steps of this pathway. The insights from this work have improved the tools to understand the function of these hormones.

In collaboration with Thomas Flatt’s team, Chantal Dauphin-Villemant is presently interested in characterizing the steroidogenic function of Drosophila ovaries and in unravelling how ecdysteroid production affects longevity in female fruit flies.

September 2010: 1st DK Welcome Event

Social kick-off: Students met for a hike with Heurigen in the vineyards above Vienna

July 2010: DK start date

2010 selection completed
More than 100 applicants followed this year's call for PhD positions. Interviews were offered to 10% of the most highly qualified candidates. 80% of the candidates accepted the offered positions and we happily welcome them to our program in September!