Sara-Lena Completes Her Master’s Thesis
Earlier this week Sara-Lena defended her Master’s thesis at Lübeck University. Sara-Lena compared fast methods for classifying bacteria based on their genome...
Welcome to the website of the Research Group Bioinformatics at the Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Biology.
We work on computational tools for discovering genetic markers from
whole genome sequences. This has resulted in the programs
andi and
phylonium for estimating
evolutionary distances from genomes, the program
fur for finding unique regions
from target and off-target genomes, and the package
Neighbors for discovering
the target and off-target genomes available in Genbank. The most
interesting off-target genomes are the targets’ closest distinct
relatives, which we call their neighbors, hence the name of the
package, Neighbors.
To further support the discovery of targets and neighbors, we also provide a REST API for Neighbors hosted on our web server Never. This server underlies our website for visualizing the taxonomy of life and the associated genome sequences, Vitax.
Recent posts
Open PhD positions
We have two open PhD positions. The application deadline is 11th January, 2026. For more info see the 2026 IMPRs EvolBio call
Bit Rot
The idea of “bit rot” might seem a bit fanciful. After all, perishable things like autumn leaves rot, but why should a substance as intangible as software un...
Returning from ISMB25
Last Friday the ISMB25 in Liverpool wrapped up like it had started, with one of the Chemistry Nobel laureates 2024 speaking. On the first day, John Jumper ha...
Abstracts for ISMB25 Accepted
The abstracts for this year’s ISCB have just been accepted. So Beatriz, Ivan, and Bernhard are looking forward to going to Liverpool in July.