On 28th November OxTalks will move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events' (full details are available on the Staff Gateway).
There will be an OxTalks freeze beginning on Friday 14th November. This means you will need to publish any of your known events to OxTalks by then as there will be no facility to publish or edit events in that fortnight. During the freeze, all events will be migrated to the new Oxford Events site. It will still be possible to view events on OxTalks during this time.
If you have any questions, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
Our lab research is focused on identifying the evolutionary genomic basis of vertebrate longevity and ageing. We use the turquoise killifish (Nothobranchius furzeri) as a reference model organism, a fish characterized by embryonic diapause, rapid sexual maturation and the shortest lifespan among all captive vertebrates (4 months in the GRZ strain). Taking advantage of the natural diversity in ageing and longevity phenotypes among different turquoise killifish populations, we use comparative genomics and population genetics to investigate the evolution of the genomic bases of extreme lifespan phenotypes. Since killifish have highly complex gut microbial commensal communities and are equipped with a lymphocyte-based adaptive immune system, we recently started to investigate how the gut microbial population interacts with the host immune function to modulate the ageing process. We additionally develop theoretical models and numerical simulations to simulate the evolution of biological ageing under different constraints and ask the fundamental question of how natural selection shapes the evolution of different life history traits, such as growth and individual survival.
