RT @Geoffrey_E_Hill: A new paper with big news in the world of red carotenoid ornamentation: House Finches do not utilize CYP2J19/BDH1L to….

I'm recruiting PhD students to work on mitochondrial bioenergetics. Check out my talk from #Evol2024 on HGT of an alternative mito pathway.We do other cool mito evolution and physiology, plz get in touch!.

RT @theNASciences: Congratulations Jonathan Wendel of @IowaStateU, newly inducted #NASmember! #NAS161 #plantbiology #genomics https://t.co/….

RT @IowaStateUNews: An ISU research team has created organoids from turtle livers, the 1st-ever turtle organoids. The discovery will speed….

RT @HavirdLab: Anytime I talk about extreme rate variation in plant mtDNA evolution, people ask why some lineages evolve fast. @KendraZwoni….

RT @jeanne_serb: Opening for Professor & Department Chair in Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology @eeob_isu @IowaStateU. Be part of a….

RT @HavirdLab: Our great work led by the Schumer lab is finally out @Nature This is some of the best evidence out there that mitonuclear in….

Hi #SICB2024, I'm recruiting graduate students interested in evolutionary bioenergetics. Check out my talk on chytrid fungus mitochondria Fri, 8:45 , rm 604. Visit to learn about projects ready for students to pickup on mitonculear evol and mito physiology.

RT @AEMcDonaldWLU: Check out this new publication by @ryanjweaver_ and I about the amazing enzyme alternative oxidase! .

RT @HavirdLab: Sex determination is incredibly varied! In this new paper led by @Texas_Mussels, we find a small RNA encoded in the mtDNA of….

We also highlight cases of sequence contaminants that falsely attribute AOX sequences to taxa that do not have them. But the thing I’m most jazzed about is putative repeated independent horizontal gene transfer of AOX into metazoan genomes from fungi and protists.

Why such a low-tech approach? 1stbecause it works. 2nd because we hope to increase AOX awareness of researchers who might be put off by model-based tools (which we also used) to help them determine if their critter of interest has AOX.

Knowing amino acid identities at positions up and down stream of IBSs can discern between bacterial vs fungal, protist vs metazoan, etc with good certainty. We created a flowchart to facilitate this.

We analyzed AOX seqs we’ve collected over the past decade from across the tree of life and after hours of staring at alignments, some patterns emerged. Sequence motifs around the 4 strictly conserved iron-binding sites tend to be diagnostic to the phylum level or lower.

But some will recognize that even when substrates, cofactors, etc are added the list of important electron transport enzymes is incomplete. What’s missing are enzymes that create branched ETCs in 1000s of taxa. Here I focus on my favorite the alternative oxidase AOX.

The roles mitos play depend ultimately on managing electron flow through their electron transport chains. And this is what a text-book depiction of the ETC looks like. Electrons move through 4 enzymes and terminate at CIV to reduce O2 to H2O.

.@AEMcDonaldWLU and I have a new paper out reviewing the wide taxonomic distribution of an understudied aspect of mitochondrial physiology, the alternative oxidase AOX. We update, clarify, and correct the record of which taxa encode AOX in their genomes.

Why such a low-tech approach? 1st because it works. 2nd because we hope to increase AOX awareness of researchers who might be put off by model-based tools (which we also used) to help them determine if their critter of interest has AOX.

Knowing amino acid identities at positions up and down stream of IBSs can discern between bacterial vs fungal, protist vs metazoan, etc with good certainty. We created a flowchart to facilitate this.

We analyzed AOX seqs we collected over the past decade from across the tree of life and after 100s of hrs staring at seq alignments, some patterns emerged. Sequence motifs around 4 strictly conserved iron-binding sites tend to be diagnostic to the phylum level or lower.