Jeffrey Gritton

Bio

• 2002-Present: PhD canditate in Biology at MIT
• 2002: BS in Physics University of Utah

Research

The goal of my research is to better understand the molecular architecture of evolved systems. Here I propose to study how the yeast pheromone response pathway decays due to mutation. Specifically I plan to:

1. Measure the rate of accumulation of loss of function mutations in the pheromone response pathway using both chemostat and batch culture experiments.
2. Collect and assay mutants periodically from a growing chemostat culture. I will use complementation tests to characterize the distribution of mutations in the pheromone response pathway.
3. Determine whether the sharing of protein components between the pheromone response and the high osmolarity glycerol (HOG) pathways allows selection for HOG function to have an affect on the rate of accumulation of pheromone response mutants.
4. Design and build a computational model that provides a simplified evolvable representation of cell signaling pathways. I expect to use the model as a tool to explore and develop insights that will lead to experimentally verifiable hypotheses.