The outcome of the 1st EvoMG Joint PhD Call was announced today. Pairs of labs participating on the EvoMG Program were invited to propose co-supervised PhD projects on topics directly related to evolutionary medical genomics. The main evaluation criteria were the excellence and originality of the proposal, the fit within evolutionary medical genomics research, and the synergy between the two labs.

Four proposals were submitted (deadline 15/10/23). They were assessed by an ad hoc Evaluation Committee: Arnau Sebe-Pedros (chair, CRG researcher participating on the EvoMG Program), Ana Janic (UPF-MELIS, medical genomics) and Josefa Gonzalez (IBE-CSIC, evolutionary biology).

The top two project, which will receive a PhD fellowship from the EvoMG Program, were:

1) "Exploring the interplay between horizontal gene flow (between microbes) and horizontal microbiome transmission (between hosts)", co-supervised by Amelie Baud and Mireia Valles-Colomer. The project will analyze microbial genomes and both their transmission between hosts and the transfer of genes between microorganisms in an evolutionary framework, assessing whether there is selection by the host on such microbial processes.

2) "Identification of clinically relevant transcriptomic alterations", co-supervised by Jonathan Frazer/Mafalda Dias and Manuel Irimia. The overarching goal of the project is to generate a probabilistic model that captures the variation of tissue-specific gene expression and alternative splicing across a wide range of vertebrate species to enable the identification of clinically relevant transcriptomic alterations in patient RNA-seq samples.