People
Department: Neurobiology and Behavior
Lab: Shaw lab and members
Research: We are a research group united by an interest in evolutionary biology broadly, how mating systems evolve and diverge, and how these processes contribute to the formation of new species. We study a variety of questions, including: (1) How does speciation occur? (2) What is the genomic basis of behavioral evolution and speciation? (3) Do natural and sexual selection play a role in speciation? and (4) How do species interactions and the ecological community contribute to the process of speciation? We study these questions using a diversity of methods and approaches, including field and lab studies of the behaviors of organisms, genetics and genomics, and phylogenetic and comparative methods. Traditionally our work has focused on the Hawaiian endemic swordtail crickets, the fastest speciating invertebrates discovered to date.
Department: Neurobiology and Behavior
Research: We are interested in (1) understanding the evolution of mechanisms animals use to mediate social interactions, especially individual recognition; and (2) the evolutionary, ecological and physiological consequences of social behavior. We use tools from behavioral ecology; evolutionary biology; population, comparative and functional genomics; and neuroscience in paper wasps and house mice.
Research: Chelsea’s research and teaching focuses on plant diversity and the evolution of plant form and function. She and her students and postdocs use traditional morphological and developmental techniques combined with molecular genetics, comparative genomics and phylogenetics to study the natural diversity of plants and to help understand the forces creating and sustaining this diversity. Her lab uses living and museum collections to advance their research in systematics, biogeography, population genetics, developmental evolution, and conservation.
Department: Public and Ecosystem Health
Research: The research activities of the Stanhope laboratory are primarily concerned with the application of molecular evolutionary biology principles and techniques to issues of comparative genomics, and population genomics within various groups of bacterial and viral pathogens. We are interested in the molecular evolutionary history, and specifics, of how pathogens are adapted to different hosts, and in identifying genes associated with various disease phenotypes in both animals and humans. This work involves NGS comparative genomic and transcriptomic data acquired from a number of different groups of pathogens ranging from bacteria, to coronaviruses, to protozoans. Additional interests of the laboratory include the pan-genome dynamics of bacterial speciation and the application of an evolutionary biology approach to understanding the development and spread of antibiotic resistance. Recently we have taken a foray into eukaryotic genomics and are studying comparative genomics of sharks, exploring such traits as their wound healing abilities, cancer protection, and electroreception.
Department: Natural Resources and the Environment
Research: My research aims to improve our understanding of how species adapt to their environment, and how quickly they can respond to altered conditions caused by selective harvest, climate change, or other anthropogenic pressures. With a primary focus on marine and anadromous fish, we study how spatial and temporal variation in selection pressures interact to shape patterns of genetic variation within species and explore the roles of ongoing genetic adaptation and geographic distribution shifts in promoting species persistence in our rapidly changing world. We use cost-effective methods for full genome screening and often couple studies of contemporary variation with time series of genomic data, which allow for direct tracking of changes over known time scales and therefore provide a unique opportunity to observe recent dynamics and microevolution in retrospective “real time”.
Department: Computational Biology
Lab: Wei lab and members
Research: April Wei is interested in developing and applying population and evolutionary genetics theory to understand human evolution and health. Her recent research focuses on developing accurate and scalable methods for inferring complex demographic history and for understanding genetic and phenotypic evolution in light of population admixture.
Department: Food Science
Research: The specific objective of my research program is to develop a better understanding of the pathogenesis, ecology, evolution, and transmission of bacterial foodborne and zoonotic diseases. The pathogenesis of foodborne and zoonotic diseases can involve complex interactions between a bacterial pathogen, a variety of environments and one or multiple host species. The ability of bacterial cells to survive and compete in a variety of environments plays a key role in the pathogenesis and transmission of many foodborne diseases. In addition, selective pressures not associated with mammalian hosts may contribute significantly to the emergence and evolution of virulence characteristics related to the ability of bacteria to effectively infect mammalian hosts. Foodborne zoonotic pathogens provide ideal model systems for studying the ecology of infectious diseases, including adaptation of clonal groups to specific hosts and non-host environments as well as virulence gene expression and maintenance of virulence characteristics under widely varying conditions, including those not directly associated with a host.
Department: Molecular Biology and Genetics
Research: Broadly, our lab is interested in using molecular biology and genetics to dissect the important reproductive processes that occur around the time when a sperm fertilizes an egg. We use the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, for most of our work. Drosophila reproduction and development can be readily studied with molecular genetic and genomic techniques. Furthermore, Drosophila serves as a model for other animal systems. Many of the genes and reproductive/developmental phenomena in flies have counterparts or analogues in other animals, including humans and insect vectors of disease.
Research: We perform research in the broad area of Network Systems Biology with both high-throughput experimental and integrative computational methodologies, aiming to understand gene functions and their relationships within complex molecular networks and how perturbations to such systems may lead to various human diseases. The complexity of biological systems calls for building experimentally-verified computational models based on high-quality large-scale datasets, which is truly the future of biomedical research and the main theme of the lab. Our research is focused in five main areas: functional and comparative genomics, molecular and dynamic proteomics, structural proteomics and networks, algorithms and tools, and technology development.