Allocation from the Icelandic Research Fund for the financial year 2025

The Board of The Icelandic Research Fund has completed the allocation of grants for new research projects for 2025. A total of 381 valid applications were received by the Research Fund, 64 of which were funded, or almost 17%.

Tests for the replication of an association between Egfr and natural variation in Drosophila melanogaster wing morphology - BMC Genomic Data

Background Quantitative differences between individuals stem from a combination of genetic and environmental factors, with the heritable variation being shaped by evolutionary forces. Drosophila wing shape has emerged as an attractive system for genetic dissection of multi-dimensional traits. We utilize several experimental genetic methods to validation of the contribution of several polymorphisms in the Epidermal growth factor receptor (Egfr) gene to wing shape and size, that were previously mapped in populations of Drosophila melanogaster from North Carolina (NC) and California (CA). This re-evaluation utilized different genetic testcrosses to generate heterozygous individuals with a variety of genetic backgrounds as well as sampling of new alleles from Kenyan stocks. Results Only one variant, in the Egfr promoter, had replicable effects in all new experiments. However, expanded genotyping of the initial sample of inbred lines rendered the association non-significant in the CA population, while it persisted in the NC sample, suggesting population specific modification of the quantitative trait nucleotide QTN effect. Conclusion Dissection of quantitative trait variation to the nucleotide level can identify sites with replicable effects as small as one percent of the segregating genetic variation. However, the testcross approach to validate QTNs is both labor intensive and time-consuming, and is probably less useful than resampling of large independent sets of outbred individuals.

Trophic diversity and evolution in Enantiornithes: a synthesis including new insights from Bohaiornithidae

Postdoc Gabriele Sansalone leaves the lab to become a PI – Carmelo Fruciano – Research

The lab will move to the University of Catania – Carmelo Fruciano – Research