[Plsgs] Seminars by faculty candidates, Ecosystem Genomics

[Lambert, Georgina M - (glambert)]

Dear colleagues,

Please join us this upcoming week of 12 February for seminars by Drs. Rachael Bay and Ashley Teufel, who are visiting campus as candidates for a faculty position in the Ecosystem Genomics cluster (titles and abstracts are posted below).
Dr. Bay earned her PhD in 2015 in Biology from Stanford, working with Stephen Palumbi.  She is currently an NSF postdoctoral fellow at UCLA in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.
Dr. Teufel earned her PhD in 2015 after working on mechanistic models of gene duplication with David Liberles at the University of Wyoming.  She is now a postdoctoral fellow with Claus Wilke at the University of Texas, Austin.

Thank you!

Sincerely,

Scott Saleska and Betsy Arnold, co-chairs
Ecosystem Genomics search committee


Integrating genomic data into predictions of climate change adaptation
Dr. Rachael Bay
UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability

EEB Seminar and faculty job talk for “Ecosystem Genomics” cluster

Monday, February 12, 2018
3pm, ENR2 S017

From agriculture to urbanization to invasive species, humans have created novel evolutionary challenges for organisms across the globe. Perhaps one of the most widespread of these challenges is climate  change, which pushes organisms past their physiological limits and can result in population decline or local extinction. With the increasing ease of genome sequencing in natural populations, genetic variation associated with climate has been uncovered in a wide variety of systems. Although this genetic variation represents the raw material needed for organisms to adapt to ongoing climate change, we know little about the relative rates and limits of adaptation. In this talk, I will present frameworks for using population genomics to predict evolutionary responses to climate change, focusing on two very different taxa – migratory birds and reef-building corals. I will also discuss how evolutionary predictions can be synthesized to inform conservation plans.


How does complex life functionally diversify?
Dr. Ashley Teufel
Integrative Biology, University of Texas, Austin

EEB Seminar and faculty job talk for “Ecosystem Genomics” cluster

Thursday, February 15, 2018
1pm, ENR2 S017

The diversity of life that we see today stems from a single common ancestor and has been ~3.5 billion years in the making. However, the biochemical processes that underlie the functionally diversification of organisms are poorly understood. To explore the molecular mechanisms governing functional diversification I use evolutionary simulations to examine the relationship between selective pressures, protein biochemistry, and functional change. I find that proteins maintain the ability to functionally interact with one another over long evolutionary periods even when that function is not being selected for. I also identify key biochemical differences that are indicative of the loss of functional interaction. Further, when examining how duplicated proteins functionally diversify I have made the unexpected observation that important functional changes frequently happen in non-duplicated proteins that interact with duplicated proteins, rather than in the duplicated proteins themselves. Interestingly, this finding implies that the mere presences of a duplicate can impact how protein interfaces co-evolve, independent of the fate of a duplicate. Although it is conventionally assumed that duplicate genes acquire novel functionality due to changes to the gene itself, I demonstrate that these ends can be facilitated by modifications to the original functionality. This finding highlights that concepts of functional gain, change, or loss after duplication need to be studied in the context of the entire system containing a duplicated gene, not just the duplicated gene by itself.



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A. Elizabeth (Betsy) Arnold
School of Plant Sciences
The University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721

http://arnoldlab.net
barnoldaz at gmail.com<mailto:barnoldaz at gmail.com>
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