Jeanne Marie serb, ph.d.
Jeanne is an evolutionary biologist whose work focuses on photosensory systems and related traits. She uses molluscs to study the genetic processes that drive the evolutionary conversion of non-visual tissue to a perceptual organ that senses light and to understand the biochemical mechanisms that are involved in light-sensitivity of proteins.
She received her Ph.D. from the University of Alabama in 2003 where she studied gene architecture of mitochondrial genomes. Subsequently, she was a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara where she developed the scallop as a model to study eye evolution. She is an Associate Professor in the Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology department and the Director for the Office of Biotechnology at Iowa State University.
Kyle McElroy, PH.D.
Transposable elements (TEs; "jumping genes") are parasitic genomic elements than can replicate within their host genome. Despite potential hazard to their hosts, TEs often make up large proportions of the genome and are found in nearly all organisms. A deeper understanding of the dynamics of TE evolution will provide important new insights regarding the evolution of genome architecture. The P. antipodarumsystem provides an especially powerful setting in which to study TEs because evolutionary theory predicts both that (1) the reduced efficacy of selection in the absence of recombination should result in the unchecked proliferation of TEs in asexual lineages, but (2), TEs should be subject to loss via genetic drift in asexual lineages because TEs cannot spread to new lineages in the absence of sex. I am using our genomic resources to characterize the influence of reproductive mode on TE evolution in P. antipodarum.
Dalton Smedley, PH.D. Candidate
I enjoy the processes of science. I’ve spent the last 5 years studying visual systems in vertebrates and mollusks from a molecular context. In tandem, I have been teaching various levels of undergraduate courses in different fields of biology including human anatomy and physiology as well as laboratory techniques and one on one mentoring with undergraduates and visiting scholars within our lab. My work focuses on sensory biology in non-model organisms using genetic/molecular techniques with phylogenetic techniques and a cell culture approach to allow us to express and analyze light sensitive proteins and understand how these visual systems have evolved.