Species from widely divergent taxa can experience similar changes in traits. What underlying genetic drivers cause these parallel changes remains an open question. Tim Sackton (Director of Bioinformatics and former postdoc in Scott Edwards Lab), PhD student, Phil Grayson and Prof. Scott Edwards used a new method developed by collaborators in the Harvard Statistics Department to look across groups of birds that have repeatedly lost flight. The team showed there is convergence in the regulatory regions associated with genes related to flight, but not within the protein coding regions.
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Congratulations to Dan Hartl, awarded the 2019 Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal by the Genetics Society of America!

In a study in the March 15 issue of Science Magazine, Mansi Srivastava and lab members Andrew Gehrke, Emily Neverett, Yi-Jyun Luo, Lorenzo Ricci (Postdocs) and Ryan Hulett (PhD student) shed light on how some animals have the amazing ability to regenerate and uncovered a number of DNA switches that appear to control genes for whole-body regeneration.

The team used three-banded panther worms to test the process and discovered...

Congratulations to OEB graduate students awarded the Fall 2018 Derek Bok Center Certificates of Distinction in Teaching!

Nicole Bedford (OEB 145); Catherine Chamberlain (SCILIVSY 12); Samuel Church (OEB 155R); Jessica Gersony (OEB 120); Kadeem Gilbert (OEB 114); Benjamin Goulet (OEB 50); Eadaoin Harney (OEB 252); Alyssa Hernandez (OEB 10); Ryan Hulett...

Postdoc, Valentina Di Santo (Lauder Lab) examined the effect of ocean acidification and warming on mineralization of fish skeleton. Previous studies have focused on the effect of these climate-related stressors on calcification rates of the exoskeleton, or shell of marine invertebrates, as well as the ear stone of fishes. However, DiSanto's study, published in Proceedings of the...