登録
- 2025-12-02 - Registration is now open!
- 2026-01-02 - First round of selection for workshop participants
- 2026-04-20 - Arrival dinner and keynote
About the Workshop
Computational Approaches to Early Evolution brings together people who work with messy, real-world data on early life. The aim is simple: connect cutting-edge phylogenetics, genome-resolved metagenomics, and molecular evolution to say something concrete about how cells, metabolisms, and communities emerged and diversified. We'll focus on methods that scale to the current deluge of genomes, handle horizontal gene transfer and link evolutionary inferences to physiology, ecology, and the rock record.
Invited speakers
Prof. Phil Hugenholtz – University of Queensland, Australia
Prof. Tom A. Williams – University of Bath, UK
Dr. Sandra Álvarez-Carretero – University College London, UK
Prof. Paola Laurino – OIST, Japan
Prof. Shawn E. McGlynn – Earth-Life Science Institute, Japan
Dr. Masaru K. Nobu – JAMSTEC, Japan
Dr. Eduard Ocaña-Pallarès – Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Catalonia
Prof. Anne-Florence Bitbol – EPFL, Switzerland
Prof. Ben J. Woodcroft – Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Dr. Edmund R. R. Moody – University of Barcelona, Catalonia
Dr. Arisa Nishihara – RIKEN, Japan
Dr. Bastien Boussau – CNRS / Université Lyon 1, France (online)
Prof. Anja Spang – NIOZ & University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands (online)
Dr. Adrian Davin (online)
All talks in B250 | Poster sessions in front of B250 on Monday and in Lab 5 Atrium on Wednesday
| DAY 0 — Mon 20 April · Arrival & Keynote | ||
| 16:00 – 17:30 | Poster Session 1 + Coffee [in front of B250] | |
| 17:30 – 18:30 | Prof. Phil Hugenholtz | Towards a robust and complete species tree |
| 19:00 – 21:00 | Welcome Dinner | |
| DAY 1 — Tue 21 April · Setting the Stage | ||
| 09:00 – 10:00 | Prof. Tom A. Williams | The origin of eukaryotes: recent progress and open questions |
| 10:00 – 10:30 | Giorgio Bianchini | Patterns of molecular evolution across prokaryotes |
| 10:30 – 11:00 | Anzhelika Koldaeva | Machine learning prediction of prokaryotic phenotypes |
| 11:00 – 11:30 | Enzo Marsot | Towards rapid and flexible phylogenetic reconciliation |
| 11:30 – 13:00 | Lunch | |
| 13:00 – 14:00 | Dr. Sandra Álvarez-Carretero | Dating deep divergences: challenges and emerging strategies |
| 14:00 – 14:30 | Noah Ares Wahl | Highways of horizontal gene transfer under the UndatedDTL model |
| 14:30 – 15:00 | Coffee Break | |
| 15:00 – 16:00 | Paola Laurino | TBD |
| 16:00 – 16:30 | Lada Isakova | What constrains the evolutionary exploration of protein sequence space? |
| 16:30 – 17:00 | Jialin Yin | Tracing the evolutionary history of biomolecular condensates |
| 17:00 – 17:30 | Coffee Break | |
| 17:30 – 18:30 | Dr. Bastien Boussau (online) | Phyloformer 2: simulation-based Bayesian phylogenetic inference |
| DAY 2 — Wed 22 April · Expanding Perspectives | ||
| 09:00 – 10:00 | Prof. Shawn E. McGlynn | Network approaches for thinking about early metabolic evolution |
| 10:00 – 10:30 | Eisuke Masui | Integrating Protein Evolutionary Profiles with Reaction Center Topologies |
| 10:30 – 11:00 | Megha Suresh | Decoding the Genetic Code: How the Translation System Constrains Code Evolution |
| 11:00 – 11:30 | Astra Demertzi | Resolving the position of mitochondria in the Tree of Life |
| 11:30 – 13:00 | Lunch | |
| 13:00 – 14:00 | Dr. Masaru K. Nobu | Integration of phylogenetics-independent tools for brainstorming evolution of metabolism |
| 14:00 – 14:30 | Fatima Li-Hau | Oxygen use throughout Life's history |
| 14:30 – 15:00 | Coffee Break | |
| 15:00 – 16:00 | Dr. Eduard Ocaña-Pallarès | Horizontal gene transfer in eukaryotes |
| 16:00 – 16:30 | István Oszoli | Investigating the stability of positive pairwise interactions |
| 16:30 – 17:00 | Coffee Break | |
| 17:00 – 18:00 | Prof. Anja Spang (online) | Archaeal symbiont evolution: from deep time to the present |
| 18:00 – 19:30 | Poster Session 2 + Drinks [Lab 5 Atrium] | |
| DAY 3 — Thu 23 April · Focus & Recharge (Free Afternoon) | ||
| 09:00 – 10:00 | Prof. Anne-Florence Bitbol | Predicting interaction partners and generating new protein sequences using protein language models |
| 10:00 – 10:30 | Coffee Break | |
| 10:30 – 11:30 | Prof. Ben J. Woodcroft | Hunting novel lineages and their genomes |
| 11:30 – 13:00 | Lunch | |
| 13:30 → | Free Afternoon | |
| DAY 4 — Fri 24 April · Synthesis & Future Directions | ||
| 09:00 – 10:00 | Dr. Edmund R. R. Moody | The nature of LUCA, and the timeline of metabolic evolution |
| 10:00 – 10:30 | Brett Babec | Estimation of integrated viral genome trees using the coalescent method |
| 10:30 – 11:00 | Joshua Mitchell | Modeling prokaryotic niches and the genomic drivers of adaptation |
| 11:00 – 11:30 | João Gervásio | Supersize me: evolution of genome size in Giant Viruses |
| 11:30 – 13:00 | Lunch | |
| 13:00 – 14:00 | Dr. Arisa Nishihara | Tracing Archean enzyme evolution from oxidoreductase phylogeny to photosynthesis |
| 14:00 – 14:30 | Dan Kehila | Misinteraction load: the risk of cellular complexity |
| 14:30 – 15:00 | Coffee Break | |
| 15:00 – 15:30 | Tom Bourguignon & Cong Liu | Transposon phylogeny |
| 15:30 – 16:00 | Gerald Pao | Causal Inference from Evolutionary Sequences |
| 16:30 – 17:00 | Coffee Break | |
| 17:00 – 18:00 | Dr. Adrian Davin (online) | Predicting community membership from gene content |
| 19:00 – 22:00 | Gala Dinner | |
| DEPARTURE — Sat 25 April | ||
Invited / Keynote Contributed Online Poster Social
Please contact gergely.szollosi@oist.jp with any questions!