The Sethuraman Lab will move to the Department of Biology at San Diego State University in Fall 2021! Dr. Sethuraman will be affiliated with the Evolutionary Biology group, and the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Biological and Medical Informatics. We will be hiring several PhD and Masters students soon - stay tuned for job announcements in coming months! 

Dr. Sethuraman recently received an NIH R15 Award titled "The Architecture of Missing Variation in Human Population Genomic Data"! The grant will fund the development of methods to (1) estimate archaic population structure, (2) evolutionary history which includes gene flow from archaic "ghost" genomes, as well as (3) quantifying the architecture of archaic ancestry in modern human populations across the world.  More exciting times! 

Hearty congratulations to all Sethuraman Lab graduates - Michelle, Gwen, Alicia, Theresa, and Ben - here are some photos from commencement! We wish you all the brightest futures ahead!

Dr. Sethuraman was just awarded the prestigious NSF CAREER Award which will fund the next five years of computational research in our lab! This grant will focus on the development of novel computational methods to deal with three types of missing data - (1) data missing at random due to genotyping or sequencing errors, (2) data missing due to reduced representation sequencing techniques and allele dropout (e.g. RADseq), and (3) data missing due to extinction (e.g. "ghost" variants from extinct lineages into extant sampled lineages). Exciting times! His award was also recently featured by CSUSM news.

Our new study on the demographic composition and gaps in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts in three evolution societies (SSE, ASN and SSB) has now been published in Evolution. Read the published article here, and do let us know your thoughts and recommendations for bridging these gaps in the future.

Our long awaited PPP release manuscript has now been accepted for publication in Molecular Biology and Evolution! This paper describes our first release of a comprehensive pipeline for all things population genomics - starting from a VCF file, to performing numerous population genomics analyses. Congratulations to all Sethuraman and Hey Lab folks that have contributed to this project over the years - Andrew Webb, Jared Knoblauch, Apeksha Sukesh Kallur, Nitesh Sabankar, Jonathan Tedjo. You can read the preprint here, and also check out PPP's first release here. This work was funded by NSF ABI 1564659 to Arun Sethuraman and Jody Hey. 

Our lab's latest manuscript that details the lack of phenotypic variation in aphid larval utilization (see boxplot below, showing overlapping intervals in mean weight gain ratios) in two disparate populations of Hippodamia convergens, despite population structure (see admixture plot below, showing split of the CA and KS populations into separate clusters) has now been accepted for publication at Biological Control! Congratulations to Sethuraman Lab members - Bryce Summerhays, Christy Grenier, Roxane Saisho, Ryan Cartmill, Al Rothenberg, Alicia Tovar, Andrew Rynerson, Tanairi Martinez, and Jerrika Scott on this milestone! You can read the preprint of this publication here.

Dr. Sethuraman was recently awarded 2019's "Kerri Mowen Excellence in Faculty Mentoring Award" by CSUSM's President Ellen Neufeldt and Drs. Julie Jameson and Robert Iafe, on behalf of the CUGR (Committee for Undergraduate Research) and Office of Graduate Studies and Research. Kudos to all his amazing mentees for nominating him!

Congratulations to our amazing collaborator, Dr. Elinne Becket and her team for publishing the draft genomes of three bacterial strains isolated from cleanrooms from the Viking and Mars Exploration Rover at NASA! Special congratulations to Sethuraman Lab undergrads, Roxane Saisho, Dylan Steinecke, and Jeff Jaureguy on being co-authors on this manuscript! Read the manuscript here.

The Sethuraman Lab is continuing to science in these crazy times, socially distanced and wearing our PPE in graduate student Alicia's garage. Special thanks to Alicia's mom for hosting us so graciously! Meanwhile, we welcome Walker, Camila, and Tim to the lab this Summer! We sincerely hope that you are all staying safe and sane out there - please take care of yourselves, and yours, and science on.