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Sea Anemone

Arabidopsis

Wild-type and transgenic Arabidopsis plants expressing miR156, a microRNA that promotes juvenility and increases the rate of leaf initiation

Telomeres

Giant ‘polytene’ chromosomes (white) from a fruit fly with a fluorescent probe (red) that hybridizes to a telomere-restricted DNA repeat.

Larix siberica

Siberian Larch, taken at our field site near Lake Khovsgol in north-central Mongolia.  We are analyzing tree-ring width and stable isotopes of the tree rings to reconstruct climate, and Larch responses to climate change, over the past century as the temperature in Mongolia has risen.  

Field Work

Many genes that organisms use to regulate their mutualists are also used to defend against parasites and pathogens. The shared genetic control of beneficial and harmful symbioses raises the intriguing possibility that susceptibility to infection is a pleiotropic cost of mutualism. Our goal is to understand how a genetic tradeoff between attracting mutualists and repelling parasites has shaped the genomic architecture of traits mediating species interactions, and how ongoing conflict influences adaptation.