We study the evolution of developmental mechanisms using marine invertebrate embryo and larval models. We compare the organization of gene regulatory networks (GRNs) to discover essential features of animal development and gain a better understanding of how evolutionary changes are incorporated into developmental programs.
We use a variety of marine invertebrates, particularly echinoderms, for our research. This is due largely to the fact that the most extensive GRN currently exists for the sea urchin embryo (see http://sugp.caltech.edu/endomes/) and the starfish has been shown to be an excellent comparative model. Marine invertebrates also represent the largest morphological diversity on the planet and present a wealth of opportunity to explore the association between development, phenotype, and evolution.
What are conserved features of GRNs? These may be particular relationships of orthologous genes that can explain the preservation of phylotypic characters or may even represent developmental phenomena more widespread among the metazoa that are thus crucial for understanding animal development.
We study the evolution of developmental mechanisms using marine invertebrate embryo and larval models. We compare the organization of gene regulatory networks (GRNs) to discover essential features of animal development and gain a better understanding of how evolutionary changes are incorporated into developmental programs.
The research interests and experience within this laboratory fall into the area broadly defined as evolution of developmental mechanisms. Our particular approach for understanding conserved and divergent properties of animal development is to compare architectural organization of gene regulatory networks (GRNs).
GRN models consider not only the expression domains and function of many regulatory genes (mostly transcription factors), but importantly their inter-relationships. The construction of GRNs involves the use of cutting-edge embryological and molecular biological technologies to study gene expression and to undertake gene perturbation, gene transfer and cis-regulatory analyses. Since our work is comparative these techniques must often be adapted for use in non-model organisms. The relationships between regulatory genes are portrayed as network diagrams.