The Genetic and Developmental Basis of Evolutionary Change
What are the genetic and developmental origins of unique traits in natural populations and species of vertebrates? Both evolutionary and medical biologists are interested in the ways that genotypic changes can influence growth and morphology, yet we know remarkably little about the genetic and developmental mechanisms that generate natural morphological diversity. For example, in most cases of adaptive skeletal evolution, we do not know how many genes are involved, which genes are actually responsible for morphological change, whether alterations to these genes affect coding or regulatory regions, or whether the same genes are involved repeatedly in the evolution of similar traits in different populations and species. Our work addresses these major issues.
Now you see it, now you don’t: the pelvic girdle of ninespine sticklebacks is present in most populations of this fish, but several populations around the Northern Hemisphere have lost this structure. This is a major evolutionary change - the pelvis is the developmental equivalent of the legs of land animals
Lab News
6/09 Pelvis has left the building: Current Biology paper on convergent evolution of pelvic loss and other traits in sticklebacks was published online this month. Click here to see the press release.
5/09 Congratulations to graduate student Sydney Stringham for receiving an NSF TGLL fellowship!
5/09 Congratulations to undergraduate student Elissa Mulroy for receiving a BioURP minigrant and UROP internship!
5/09 Congratulations to undergraduate student Alex Tampio for receiving a BioURP minigrant and Departmental Continuing Student Scholarship!
2/09 How is sex determined in stickleback fish? Collaborative paper with Katie Peichel’s lab was published in PLoS Genetics this month. Click here for PubMed listing.
