Tuesday, May 4, 2021
Students and trainees representing numerous research fields came together April 23rd to share their research at the much anticipated annual ‘All Points West’ symposium at Yale’s West Campus. The event was the third in the series and the second year it has been held virtually.
This year’s symposium was spearheaded by West Campus trainees Josie Jacob-Dolan, Jennifer Troiano, Tayah Turocy, Sarah Ostresh, and Michael Grome, and featured flash talks from junior scholars from all seven of the Institutes at the campus, an alumni panel, and time for social networking.
Opening the symposium, Michael Crair, Vice Provost for Research with responsibility for West Campus, paid tribute to the “remarkable efforts” of the student organizers during this tumultuous year.
Some Viruses Have a Completely Different Genome to The Rest of Life on Earth
4 MAY 2021
In the world of microbial warfare, sometimes you have to change the very fabric of who you are.
Viruses that infect bacteria – fittingly called bacteriophages - and their prey have been at war for eons, each side evolving more devilish tactics to infect or destroy each other. Eventually, some bacteriophages took this arms race to a new level by changing the way they code their DNA.
At least, that s what we think happened. Once thought to be an outlier, new research published in three separate papers shows that there s a whole army of bacteriophages with non-standard DNA, which researchers call a Z-genome.