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Congratulations Dr. Elkrewi!

Marwan defended his thesis titled “Evolution of sex chromosomes, sex determination and asexuality in Artemia brine shrimp“!

During his PhD, Marwan investigated the evolution of sex chromosomes in Artemia brine shrimp, generating chromosome-level assemblies and single-nucleus RNAseq data to characterise sex-determination pathways and meiotic expression patterns. His broader research also contributed to understanding sex-chromosome evolution across diverse organisms, including schistosomes and scorpion flies.

Congratulations Dr. Elkrewi!

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Congratulations to Dr. Andrea Mrnjavac!

Yesterday, on Thursday, October 31st, Andrea successfully defended her PhD thesis, “Early Stages of Sex Chromosomes Evolution”, at ISTA.

Andrea joined ISTA in 2019 after completing her BSc and MSc in Molecular Biology at the University of Zagreb. During her PhD, she made significant contributions to the fields of molecular evolution and evolutionary genomics.

We’re incredibly proud of Andrea and excited to see where her research journey takes her next. Congratulations, Dr. Mrnjavac! šŸ„³

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Congrats to Reka!

Reka defended her thesis! And we got to celebrate!! The thesis’s title was: Characterizing the sequence and expression evolution of the t-haplotype, a model meiotic driver. In the photo we have Reka with her committee members: DefenseĀ Chair: Prof. Jan Maas (ISTA), Prof. Andrew Clark (Cornell University), Prof. Nick Barton (ISTA) and Prof. Beatriz Vicoso. Cheers, Reka!

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High school students from Slovakia visit the lab

On September 14th high school students from Slovakia visited the Vicoso lab, and learned about our research. Every year 20-30 Slovakian high school students are invited to ISTA based on their performance on a series of articles and quizes on selected topics of evolution, to which members of the Vicoso lab have also contributed. During their three-day stay, the high school students visited the ISTA campus, attended talks and visited several laboratories. PhD student Reka Kelemen represented the Vicoso lab and gave a talk to them about the evolution of sex, sexual dimorphism, and what we can learn about their evolutionary impacts when we study asexual species, like brine shrimp (Artemia clade). Afterwards they visited the Vicoso lab, where lab members Reka Kelemen, Lorena Franco and Julia Chizak showed them the brine shrimp, food moths and fruit flies that are used for research, and answered their numerous questions about them.