Dr James Galbraith

My research interests revolve around the evolution of transposable elements (TEs), in particular horizontal transposon transfer (HTT) between long diverged organisms. The number of organisms with sequenced genomes continues to increase exponentially, and with this increase more instances of HTT are being uncovered. I’m particularly interested in recent HTT events, and aim to explore the role habitat plays in promoting HTT, how transposons proliferate within populations following HTT, and how TEs impact their new host genomes following HTT. My interest in HTT was sparked during my PhD, in which I discovered repeated HTT events into the marine lineages of Australian elapid snakes.

I completed my PhD at the University of Adelaide in 2021, focusing of evolution of TEs in both birds and the highly diverse Australian elapids. Prior to my PhD I completed two Bachelors of Science degrees at the University of Adelaide, the first majoring in Geology and Remote Sensing, the second in Evolutionary Biology. Currently, I’m focusing on developing bioinformatic pipelines to better classify and understand the origins of DNA transposons in the Hayward lab, University of Exeter.

For more, please see my research papers on Google Scholar.