Ph.D., University of California, Davis, 2009
Chromatin proteins package our genomic DNA. Essential, highly conserved cellular processes rely on this genome compartmentalization, yet many chromatin proteins are wildly unconserved over evolutionary time. We study the biological forces that drive chromatin protein evolution and the functional consequences for chromosome segregation, telomere integrity, and genome defense.
BIOL 221 Molecular Biology and Genetics
BIOL 433 The Genetics of Adaptation: How sex, pathogens, and the environment shape modern genomes
Brand, C.L., Oliver, G.T., Farkas, I.Z., and M.T. Levine (2024) Recurrent duplication and diversification of a DNA repair gene family in Drosophila. Molecular Biology and Evolution 41: msae113.
Divito-Evans, A., Fairbanks, R., Schmidt, P. and M.T. Levine (2023) Histone methylation regulates reproductive diapause in Drosophila melanogaster. PLoS Genetics: 19:e1010906.
Brand, C.L. and M.T. Levine (2022) Cross-species incompatibility between a DNA satellite and the Drosophila Spartan homolog poisons germline genome integrity. Current Biology 32:1-10.
Kumon T., Ma, J., Stefanik, D., Nordgren, E., Akins, R.B., Kim, J., Levine, M.T., and M.A. Lampson (2021) Centromere drive and suppression by parallel pathways for recruiting microtubule destabilizers. Cell 184:4904-4918.e11
Saint-Leandre, B., Christopher, C., and M.T. Levine (2020) Adaptive evolution of an essential telomere protein restricts telomeric retrotransposons. eLife 9:e60987.
Saint-Leandre, B., Nguyen, SB., and M.T. Levine (2019). Diversification and collapse of a telomere elongation mechanism. Genome Research. 29: 920-931.