Research
The amazing diversity of animals in nature raises parallel questions about embryonic development and evolution: how do complex organisms develop from simple fertilized eggs? How has evolution utilized a largely conserved set of regulatory genes to generate different types of animals and body plans? Our lab began with and continues to tackle the first of these questions, using Drosophila melanogaster as a model system to study the regulatory genes and pathways that control embryonic development. We approach the second question by examining the evolution of gene function in insects, focusing on the set of genes that regulates segmentation.
Our entry into the field of 'evo-devo,' began in the lab at Mt. Sinai Medical School but blossomed when we moved to the Entomology Department at the University of Maryland in 2003. Here, we have expanded our research to include multiple different insect species that sample the diversity of insect phylogeny. We have tracked the evolution of the Hox gene fushi tarazu (ftz) and its partner, the orphan nuclear receptor Ftz-F1, through arthropod phylogeny.
These studies have led us to propose a widely accepted model for the evolution of this Hox gene, which has undergone changes in both its expression pattern and protein sequence to switch its function from an ancestral homeotic gene to a segmentation gene in Drosophila. The enormous flexibility of ftz expression and protein sequence arguably provide the clearest example in the literature to date of evolution of a Hox gene at the protein level, and challenge our understanding of mechanisms underlying transcription factor evolution. In a separate line of investigation in the lab, we have devoted considerable effort to studying RNAi mechanisms and applications in different insect speceis.
Our entry into the field of 'evo-devo,' began in the lab at Mt. Sinai Medical School but blossomed when we moved to the Entomology Department at the University of Maryland in 2003. Here, we have expanded our research to include multiple different insect species that sample the diversity of insect phylogeny. We have tracked the evolution of the Hox gene fushi tarazu (ftz) and its partner, the orphan nuclear receptor Ftz-F1, through arthropod phylogeny.
These studies have led us to propose a widely accepted model for the evolution of this Hox gene, which has undergone changes in both its expression pattern and protein sequence to switch its function from an ancestral homeotic gene to a segmentation gene in Drosophila. The enormous flexibility of ftz expression and protein sequence arguably provide the clearest example in the literature to date of evolution of a Hox gene at the protein level, and challenge our understanding of mechanisms underlying transcription factor evolution. In a separate line of investigation in the lab, we have devoted considerable effort to studying RNAi mechanisms and applications in different insect speceis.