Dr. Fred Turek

Bio:
Fred W. Turek, PhD received his undergraduate degree in the biological sciences from Michigan State University in 1969, and his PhD from Stanford University in 1973 where he carried out research on circadian and seasonal rhythms.  After postdoctoral training at the University of Texas at Austin, he took a faculty position at Northwestern University where he served as the Chair of the Department of Neurobiology & Physiology from 1987-98.  Dr. Turek is the founder and current Director of the Center for Sleep and Circadian Biology at Northwestern University.  Dr. Turek was the founding president of the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms (SRBR) and served in this capacity for six years.

Watch the seminar here!

Dr. Kate Laskowski | Laskowski Lab

Bio:
Dr. Kate Laskowski is interested in investigating how evolution has shaped the developmental processes that generate behavioral individuality. She does this by generating replicate individuals and groups of the naturally clonal fish, the Amazon molly, allowing her to “replay the developmental clock.” Kate obtained her Bachelor’s of Science at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and her PhD from the University of Illinois where she worked under Alison Bell. She then moved to Berlin Germany to work at the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology & Inland Fisheries with Max Wolf and Jens Krause before joining the Department of Evolution & Ecology at the University of California Davis in 2019.  

Abstract:
Individual behavioral variation is ubiquitous across the animal kingdom. Explaining the continued generation and maintenance of such variation is a fundamental goal in behavioral and evolutionary ecology. Our research tests key predictions drawn from theoretical models about how genetic correlations and developmental processes can drive the emergence of consistent individual behavioral variation. This work has shown that competition for, and acquisition of, resources may play key roles in shaping behavior variation both on evolutionary and developmental timescales. Using the clonal Amazon molly and an innovative high-resolution tracking system we can follow and manipulate individual experience with salient environmental cues such as resource availability and relative risk. We can track the behavioral development of individual fish from birth in, up to now, unprecedented detail, allowing us to pinpoint exactly when and in response to which cues individuality emerges. Our results highlight that in order to fully explain the presence of individual behavioral variation we need a comprehensive conceptual framework that explicitly accounts for how natural selection has shaped the developmental process.
 

Watch the seminar here!

Dr. Benjamin Garcia | Garcia Lab

Bio: 
Benjamin A. Garcia obtained his BS in Chemistry at UC Davis in 2000, where he worked as an undergraduate researcher in Prof. Carlito Lebrilla’s laboratory. He received his PhD in Chemistry in 2005 at the University of Virginia under Prof. Donald Hunt and then was an NIH NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Illinois under Prof. Neil Kelleher from 2005-2008. From there Ben was appointed as an Assistant Professor in the Molecular Biology Department at Princeton University from 2008-2012, until his recruitment as the Presidential Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in 2012, promoted to full Professor in 2016, and named the John McCrea Dickson M.D. Presidential Professor in 2017. Ben moved in the summer of 2021 to the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis to become the Raymond H. Wittcoff Distinguished Professor and Head of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics. The Garcia lab has been developing and applying novel proteomic approaches and bioinformatics for interrogating protein modifications, especially those involved in epigenetic mechanisms such as histones during human disease, publishing over 400 publications. He is presently an Associate Editor of the Analytical Chemistry, and Mass Spectrometry Reviews journals; and serves on the editorial boards for the Molecular Omics, the Journal of Proteome Research and the Molecular and Cellular Proteomics journals. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the U.S. Human Proteome Organization (HUPO), the HUPO Governing Council/Executive Committee and the Executive Committee of the American Chemical Society (ACS) Analytical Chemistry Division. Ben has been recognized with many honors and awards for his mass spectrometry research including the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS) Research Award, a National Science Foundation CAREER award, an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, the PITTCON Achievement Award, the Ken Standing Award, the ACS Arthur F. Findeis Award, The Protein Society Young Investigator Award, the ASMS Biemann Medal, the HUPO Discovery in Proteomic Sciences Award, the Eastern Analytical Symposium (EAS) Outstanding Achievement in Mass Spectrometry Award and was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Abstract:
Histones are small proteins that package DNA into chromosomes, and a large number of studies have showed that several post-translational modification (PTM) sites on the histones are associated with both gene activation and silencing.  Along with DNA and small non-coding RNA, histone PTMs make up epigenetic mechanisms that control gene expression patterns outside of DNA sequence mutations. Dysregulation of these chromatin networks underlie several human diseases such as cancer. Here I will give an update on technology advancements that have allowed for high-throughput quantitative mass spectrometry analyses of histone PTMs and chromatin structure, and how we are applying these methods to understand epigenetic reprogramming found in malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors (MPNSTs). MPNST is an aggressive sarcoma with recurrent loss of function alterations in polycomb-repressive complex 2 (PRC2), a histone-modifying complex involved in transcriptional silencing.

Dr. Cassandra Extavour | Extavour Lab

Bio: 
Cassandra Extavour is a native of Toronto, where she attended the University of Toronto Schools and went on to obtain an Honors BSc at the University of Toronto with a specialist in Molecular Genetics and Molecular Biology, a Major in Mathematics and a Minor in Spanish. She obtained her PhD with Antonio Garcia Bellido at the Severo Ochoa Center for Molecular Biology at the Autonomous University of Madrid. She performed postdoctoral work first with Michalis Averof at the Institute for Molecular Biology and Biotechnology in Crete, Greece, and subsequently with Michael Akam at the University of Cambridge. At Cambridge she received a BBSRC Research Grant and became a Research Associate in the Department of Zoology. In 2007 she established her independent laboratory as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, where she was promoted to Associate Professor in 2011 and to Full Professor in 2014. In 2021 she became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, and was named the Timken Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard. Click here to read more.

Abstract:
Reproduction is a crucial fitness parameter, essential for species survival and evolution. Despite its importance, there is massive variation in reproductive capacity across animals, even between very closely related species. Moreover, reproductive capacity can be modified by environmental and ecological factors. Our aim is to understand how genetic variation interacts with ecological variation to regulate distinct and reproductive capacities between species, to determine whether and how ecological variation contributes to the evolution of adaptive variation in reproductive capacity. Our approach takes advantage of the fact that in sexually reproducing animals, the number of offspring that an individual can produce is often predicted by the anatomy of the ovary or testis, the sites of gamete production. In female insects, ovaries are subdivided into egg-producing units called ovarioles, which are generated in species-specific numbers during development. Ovariole number, and correspondingly reproductive capacity, can vary by more than four orders of magnitude across insects. I will discuss our findings on the mechanisms of genetic and environmental control of ovariole number in closely and distantly related insect species, and their implications for the broader questions of the genetic and developmental basis of fitness-relevant evolutionary change.

 Dr. Andy Sih | Sih Lab

Andy Sih’s laboratory works on the evolution of ecologically important behaviors (predator-prey, mating, and social behaviors) life history traits, and how these influence population and community ecological patterns,  Most projects examine freshwater organisms e.g., fish amphibian larvae, crayfish, insects and other freshwater invertebrates.  Current applied ecological interests include studying effects of pesticides on predator-prey interactions, and behavioral mechanisms underlying species invasions.

Click here for more information about Dr. Sarah Tishkoff.

Abstract:

Africa is thought to be the ancestral homeland of all modern human populations.  It is also a region of tremendous cultural, linguistic, climatic, and genetic diversity.   Despite the important role that African populations have played in human history, they remain one of the most underrepresented groups in human genomics studies. A comprehensive knowledge of patterns of variation in African genomes is critical for a deeper understanding of human genomic diversity, the identification of functionally important genetic variation, the genetic basis of adaptation to diverse environments and diets, and for reconstructing modern human origins. African populations practice diverse subsistence patterns (hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, agriculturalists, and agro-pastoralists) and live in diverse environments with differing pathogen exposure (tropical forest, savannah, coastal, desert, low altitude, and high altitude) and, therefore, are likely to have experienced local adaptation. In this talk I will discuss results of analyses of genome-scale genetic variation in geographically, linguistically, and ethnically diverse African populations in order to reconstruct human evolutionary history in Africa, African and African American ancestry, as well as the genetic basis of adaption to diverse environments.

Dr. Christopher Vulpe | Vulpe Lab

Bio: 

Chris Vulpe, MD, PhD. is a Professor at the University of Florida, Gainesville in the Center for Environmental

and Human Toxicology. Dr. Vulpe received his MD and PhD from the University of California, San Francisco.

Dr. Vulpe’s group uses systems level approaches in eukaryotes from yeast to people to identify the functional

components that respond to and modulate the consequences of environmental stressors. Most recently, his laboratory is utilizing genome wide and targeted CRISPR screens to understand the mechanisms of toxicity of environmental chemicals. Dr. Vulpe is an author or co-author on >175 papers in peer reviewed journals and books. His group uses functional, genomic, and genetic approaches to provide insight into mechanisms of toxicity in diverse model systems including human models such as human cell culture, organoids, and rodents, as well as ecologically relevant organisms such as Daphnia magna.

 

Dr. Francois Spitz | Spitz Lab

Bio:

PhD from Université Paris 6 (France)

Group Leader at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (2006-2015) (Heidelberg, Germany)

Head of Research Unit at the Institut Pasteur (2015-2019) (Paris, France)

Professor, The University of Chicago (2019-.)

Abstract:

The mechanisms that regulate the efficiency and specificity of interactions between distant genes and cis-regulatory elements such as enhancers play a central role in shaping the specific regulatory programs that control cell fate and identity. In particular, the (epi)genetic elements that organize the 3D folding of the genome in specific loops and domains have emerged as key determinants of this process. I will discuss our current views on how 3D genome architecture is organized, how it influences gene regulatory interactions and illustrate how alterations of the mechanisms and elements that organize genomes in 3D could contribute to genomic disorders and genome evolution.

Dr. Blake Meyers | Meyers Lab

BIO: 

Blake Meyers is a Member & Principal Investigator at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St.

Louis, and he is a Professor in the Division of Plant Science and Technology at the University of

Missouri - Columbia. He formerly held the Edward F. and Elizabeth Goodman Rosenberg

professorship at the University of Delaware, where his research group was from 2002 to 2015. He

was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2012,

and a Fellow of the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) in 2017, the same year he was

awarded the Charles Albert Shull Award by the ASPB for outstanding investigations in the field of

plant biology. He was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2022. After serving on the

editorial board since 2008, Blake became the Editor-in-Chief of The Plant Cell in January 2020. Work

in his lab addresses the biological functions, biogenesis, genomic impact, and evolution of small

RNAs in diverse plant species, using combination of genomic and molecular genetics approaches,

with a focus on phased, secondary siRNAs (“phasiRNAs”).



He received his undergraduate degree in biology from the University of Chicago in 1992, and

working with Prof. Richard Michelmore at UC Davis, was awarded M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in genetics in 1995 and 1998, respectively. After that, he did a postdoc with Prof. Michele Morgante at DuPont Crop Genetics, working on maize genomics for 2 years before returning to Prof. Michelmore’s group at UC Davis in 2000 to do a 2nd postdoc on Arabidopsis disease resistance. In 2002, Blake started his

own research group at the University of Delaware. He was the chair of the Department of Plant & Soil Sciences at the University of Delaware from 2009 to 2015.

Abstract:

In plants, 21 or 22-nt miRNAs or siRNAs typically negatively regulate target genes through mRNA cleavage or translational inhibition. Heterochromatic or Pol IV are 24-nt and function to maintain heterochromatin and silence transposons. Phased “secondary” siRNAs (phasiRNAs) are generated from mRNAs targeted by a typically 22-nt “trigger” miRNA, and are produced as either 21- or 24-mers via distinct pathways. Our prior work in maize and rice demonstrated the temporal and spatial distribution of two sets of “reproductive phasiRNAs”, which are extraordinarily enriched in the male germline of the grasses. These two sets are the 21-nt (pre-meiotic) and 24-nt (meiotic) siRNAs. Both classes are produced from long, non-coding RNAs, generated by hundreds to thousands of loci, depending on the species. These phased siRNAs show striking similarity to mammalian piRNAs in terms of their abundance, distribution, distinctive staging, and timing of accumulation, but they have independent evolutionary origins. The functions for these small RNAs in plants remain poorly characterized. I will describe our recent work investigating the functions of plant phasiRNAs and their roles in modulating traits of agronomic importance in plants, including male fertility, as well as novel applications of phasiRNAs such as those generated from transplastomic plants.