Genomics Aotearoa

Giant Jurassic Fleas!

Peter Dearden • Mar 07, 2012

Peter K. Dearden. One of the fun things about my field of research is that it is broad; I find myself reading papers on paleontology as often as genetics and development. Read More

Review of ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’, by Eric Carle

Peter Dearden • Feb 22, 2012

Peter K Dearden. Some books are redolent of your childhood, steeped in long summer days, percolated in the smell of banana, and infused with the sharp sting of skinned knees. For me such books are Proust’s ’Le Temps retrouvé’ , Hobbes ’Leviathan’ and Eric Carle’s classic ’The Very Hungry Caterpillar’. It does us good to return to these childhood classics … Read More

Sitting in Glass Houses

Peter Dearden • Mar 25, 2011

Sitting in Glass Houses; drinking tea and planning World Domination (aka Thesis Completion). by SM Morgan. I am at that stage of the PhD. Contemplating completion and what the heck comes after. There is always talk about the glass ceiling still present in industry for women and the issues surrounding women and science, especially during post-doctoral positions. ( … Read More

Are newly evolved genes as important as ancient ones?

Peter Dearden • Mar 18, 2011

by Tamsin Jones. We share about 70% of our genes with fruit flies. Those 70% are old, ancient genes, that were present in the common ancestor of flies and humans. We share many, many genes with most animals, and these conserved genes are thought to be the ones controlling all those really important processes necessary for … Read More

Science Horror-scopes: March

Peter Dearden • Mar 16, 2011

After a quiet spell over summer, the Southern Genes blog is back! We have a few ideas for new regular posts up our sleeves, so stay tuned. Also, if there’s any genetics related stuff that YOU’D like us to write about, please let us know at go.blog@otago.ac.nz. We’re going to kick the year off with those always cheerful horror-scopes from … Read More

The $10,000 Human Genome

Peter Dearden • Dec 10, 2010

Mary Gray, PhD Student, Clinical Genetics Research Group The Human Genome Project began in 1990 and took 13 years and at least $3 billion USD to complete. A biotechnology company called Illumina has recently announced that you can sequence your own genome for $10,000 USD – and it will only take around eight days to complete. The costs of … Read More