MBE winner: Jean Cury

for the paper "Host Range and Genetic Plasticity Explain the Coexistence of Integrative and Extrachromosomal Mobile Genetic Elements" published in 2018 in MBE https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/35/11/2850/5174134

"I am interested in the evolution of bacterial genomes. I did my PhD in Eduardo Rocha's lab working on the evolution of conjugative elements and integrons. I am currently doing a post-doc with Flora Jay, where we develop deep learning methods for bacterial population genomics." 

Interconversion between integrative (ICE) and extrachromosomal (plasmid) elements allows access to the higher genetic plasticity of plasmids and the broader host range of ICEs.

Runners-up

Małgorzata A Gazda

"Signatures of Selection on Standing Genetic Variation Underlie Athletic and Navigational Performance in Racing Pigeons" (Małgorzata A Gazda, Pedro Andrade, Sandra Afonso, Jolita Dilytė, John P Archer et al. Molecular Biology and Evolution, Volume 35, Issue 5, 1 May 2018, Pages 1176–1189, https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msy030. Published: 13 March 2018 https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/35/5/1176/4911169

Áine N O’Toole

"Faster Evolving Primate Genes Are More Likely To Duplicate" (Áine N O’Toole, Laurence D Hurst, Aoife McLysaght) Molecular Biology and Evolution, Volume 35, Issue 1, 1 January 2018, Pages 107–. 118, https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msx270. Published: 07 November 2017 https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/35/1/107/4554431

GBE winner: Bárbara D Bitarello

for the paper "Signatures of Long-Term Balancing Selection in Human Genomes" published in 2018 in GBE. https://academic.oup.com/gbe/article/10/3/939/4938688

"I am passionate about understanding human evolution, and this work shed light into how complex our evolution has been. It is great to see how much interest balancing selection has been receiving lately. I was very lucky to have the opportunity to work on this topic under the supervision of two amazing mentors, Diogo Meyer and Aida Andrés."

Runners-up

Yue Hao

"Patterns of Population Variation in Two Paleopolyploid Eudicot Lineages Suggest That Dosage-Based Selection on Homeologs Is Long-Lived” (Yue Hao, Jacob D Washburn, Jacob Rosenthal, Brandon Nielsen, Eric Lyons et al.) Genome Biology and Evolution, Volume 10, Issue 3, 1 March 2018, Pages 999–1011, https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evy061. Published: 19 March 2018 https://academic.oup.com/gbe/article/10/3/999/4943970

José Aguilar-Rodríguez 

"Metabolic Determinants of Enzyme Evolution in a Genome-Scale Bacterial Metabolic Network” (José Aguilar-Rodríguez, Andreas Wagner) Genome Biology and Evolution, Volume 10, Issue 11, 1 November 2018, Pages 3076–3088, https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evy234. Published: 23 October 2018 https://academic.oup.com/gbe/article/10/11/3076/5142691