General Biology Seminar

Abstract: My research seeks to unravel an important core puzzle of biology: the evolutionary origins of complex anatomy. Morphological structures, such as the ear or thumb, are the product of developmental processes controlled at the genetic level by gene regulatory networks composed of transcription factors and signaling pathways. These factors pattern gene expression by directing the spatial and temporal activation of target transcriptional regulatory regions known as enhancers. A large body of work in evolutionary developmental biology has demonstrated how the evolutionary alteration of animal form is often associated with changes in the spatial patterning of genes through mutations to enhancer sequences. However, the evolutionary path to generate novelties, morphological structures that bear no obvious antecedent, remains murky. My research program seeks to tackle this problem from several complimentary perspectives: (1) The dissection of complex polygenic pigmentation traits that arose over short evolutionary timescales; (2) Tracing the evolutionary origins of new expression patterns, and the enhancer sequences that drive them; (3) Identifying the origins of a gene regulatory network underlying recently evolved genital structures in Drosophila. Collectively, these research directions will aid in our understanding of gene regulatory network architecture and operation, while building a foundation for understanding the development and evolution of increasingly complex developmental entities