by Eleanor Joan Green and Shreya Ramachandran
This corner of the internet is going to become your one-stop shop for all those metagenomic mysteries we spend our quiet moments thinking about.
We are here to bust jargon and make engaging with ancient metagenomics research more accessible than it’s ever been before. Exciting things are happening in ancient metagenomics: from tracking the evolution of pathogens, to recreating landscape biodiversity with sedaDNA. But all of the many different tools, terms and techniques mean that starting out (and let’s be real, getting by) in ancient metagenomics is hard! We want to remove the cloak and prevent ancient metagenomics becoming another one of those “if you know, then you know” disciplines.
Coming at you delivering these ambitious plans are co-editors-in-chief Ele and Shreya, who you can get to know us below, but for now we have something more important to say. We want you! And your metagenomics pals and PIs. SPAAM is first and foremost a community-based group and for the blog to come off like we hope it will, we are relying on the community. We would love to hear from you if you have an idea for a piece you could write for the blog or if you don’t feel ready to contribute a post, we would love you to contribute a question and we will try our best to find an answer!
Our blog will be available for all the internet to see, but the easiest way to tell us you fancy getting involved is via the SPAAM slack workspace and joining the #spaam-blog. Or if that’s not going to work for you, you can email us via eg715@york.ac.uk and shreya23@uchicago.edu.
Ele Green 💀
Hello! I am a UK-based PhD student at the University of York and the Natural History Museum, London. I have experience working on multiple species (humans, dogs, horses) using a range of different materials (petrous, long bones and coprolites) in both the wet- and dry lab.
In metagenomics I am currently working on two projects. Firstly investigating the non-host portion of DNA sequenced from a group of crania which were historically recovered from the River Thames and secondly investigating the diet and gut microbiome of early medieval European populations using coprolites.
I am from a small but perfectly formed lab at the University of York and first got involved with SPAAM to make connections and learn from others working in ancient metagenomics. I believe creating this blog is going to be a huge help for members of our community when they’re trying out a new tool or grappling with a new approach. I have invested a lot of time in public outreach because clarity and accessibility of information is important to me. Now I think it’s time to apply the same approaches to an academic audience and I’m excited to get started!
You can find me on Twitter here
Shreya Ramachandran 💩
Hello from Chicago in the USA! I’m Shreya, a PhD student in Maanasa Raghavan’s lab at the University of Chicago. I’m interested in humans and the microbes that live in and around us… the friendly and the not-so-friendly! I study both modern human gut microbiomes and ancient pathogenic bacteria, and it’s the latter project that led me to the world of SPAAM.
When I’m not microbe hunting, I love teaching students about the joys of genetics and the power of clear scientific writing. As a word nerd, I’m very excited to join Ele as Co-Editor-in-Chief of this blog. I hope this project makes entering the exciting field of ancient metagenomics a lot less intimidating. And I’d love to hear from you about what would be most useful to you!
I’m on Twitter under srama23
