We had a super busy trip to America! Aparna and Eyal represented the lab in the Cold Spring Harbor Lab meeting on Biology and Genomics of Social Insects. It was awesome as always! Lots of great genomics. Aparna gave a talk on the new social supergene we discovered in Cataglyphis niger, and it was a hit! There was lots of other great genomic research in the meeting, but supergenes are simply super cool! We also heard about another new supergene or two in Temnothorax!
Next, Eyal continued to Arizona together with Mickey Kosloff to visit Juergen Liebig to talk about our collaboration on odoroant receptors. It was great to finally meet in person with Juergen and the other people working in the project. Eyal and Mickey gave a seminar on the sequences- (postive selection inference) and structure-analyses (structure prediction using Alphafold and characterization of the ligand binding site). Then we discussed the progress and challenges in the experimental work and planned the next step. It was super productive and fun!
And on the way, Mickey and Eyal saw some beautiful canyons – this was Mickey’s last slide:
