Divergent selection

Open problems in evolutionary biology (experiments and/or theory)

Evolution of life over the last >3.5 billion years has shaped the life forms that we presently see on the planet. Developments in genome sequencing and molecular biology allow us to perform evolutionary experiments in lab, and see in real time, how environment shapes changes in a population. Understanding this relationship between the environment and the changes that take place in the DNA of an organism is the focus of our lab's research. We perform theory and also perform experiments (using yeast and bacteria) to answer questions of interest.