Kreitman

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Focus Expression of early segmentation genes eve and gt in a Drosophila embryo The lab pursues four interrelated research themes: Molecular population genetics and evolution (Drosophila and Arabidopsis) Functional evolution of cis-regulatory sequences (Drosophila) Canalization in development and evolution (Drosophila) Evolutionary dynamics of disease resistance and pathogenicity (Arabidopsis) News Jan 2014 After several round of revisions (thanks to the reviewer and editor's critical reading), we really improved our analysis in the GWAS paper. Specifically, we addressed the concern of population stratification and cryptic relatedness within the DGRP population driving some of the association signals. In this regard, we had the great fortune to collaborate with Bjarni Vilhjálmsson, an expert in developing statistical methods for doing association studies in structure populations. By applying an established method (EMMAX) as well as an in-house developed permutation method, we were able to control for both stratification and cyrptic relatedness during the association study. The improved analysis method again confirmed our previous finding of sfl as a strong candidate. Check our stories and the highlight in the February issue of Genetics link to He et al. 2014 link to Park et al. 2014 Issue highlight Feb 2014 May 2013 We just submitted a pair of papers on the fly model of human misfolded insulin. While they are still under review, we've posted them onto arXiv. See below for links. S-Y Park, M.Z. Ludwig, N. Tamarina, et al. Genetic Complexity in a Drosophila Model of Diabetes-Associated Misfolded Human Proinsulin. link to arXiv He, B.Z., Ludwig, M.Z., D.A. Dickerson, et al. Effect of Genetic Variation in a Drosophila Model of Diabetes-Associated Misfolded Human Proinsulin. link to arXiv December 2012 Misha Bin Marty October 2012 Bin has successfully defended his doctoral thesis and in December he will officially graduate! He is going to join Erin O'Shea group in Harvard and HHMI. Can't believe that it has been a year since our last update. But be assured that we are not idling. Rather, two manuscripts are being cooked and hopefully we'll be able to get them out of the door early in the new year! October 2011 Misha and Manu have joint force (developmental biology + live imaging + quantitative image analysis) to tackle the question "is there a boundary to transcriptional enhancers?" Enhancers were identified as the minimal piece of sequence that can reproduce the endorgenous expression pattern and for historical reasons, their physical boundaries were "defined" by the restriction enzyme cutting site or pcr primer locations, both of which used by researchers to test difference pieces. Later people have found additional transcription factor binding sites outside these "minimal elements". They are not essential for "producing the expression pattern" in a reporter assay, which is qualitative and doesn't examine the fitness results. Do those additional binding sites matter? How? Check out here: PLoS Genetics August 2011 Congratulations to Cecelia for assuming a faculty position at the Augustana College at Sioux Falls, SD. She has been such a wonderful colleague and a spiritual core of the lab. We'll surely miss her a lot and best wishes for her new lab! Also leaving the lab are Levi Barse and Desiree Dickerson. Levi has started as a technician in the lab and over the two year period he has contributed significantly to the project of fly models for diabetes. Desiree was an undergraduate research assistant and has done an honor's thesis work in the kreitman lab. Congratulate both for getting to their next position and good luck for their future! July 2011 Cecelia Miles' collaboration with Jun Ma's group on the scaling of Bicoid gradient in artificially selected lines for egg size has been published in the journal of Development. Check out it here! pubmed April 2011 Bin He's work on the role of positive selection in transcription factor binding sites turnover has been published on PLoS Genetics. Check out here. pubmed Jan 2011 John Reinitz's group joined our department from their previous location in Stony Brooks University. We now created a Kreinitz lab, which is officially up and running! The joint force of evolution + mathematical modeling of enhancer function will surely be super cool! Be sure to follow our latest news! December 2010 Susan Lott's work on mapping genetic locus underlying pattern formation differences between drosophila species has been published on EVOLUTION. Check out here. pubmed July 2010 Cecelia's work on artificial selection on egg size causing detectable differences in expression patterning got accepted and published in EVOLUTION. Check out the story! pubmed June 2010 Congratulations to our graduates! Sarah Carl is headed to Cambridge and Anna McGeachy is headed to Johns Hopkins. Go Class of 2010!! Welcome our new students from The College, Reece DeHaan, Desiree Dickerson, and David Gittin! Group Pictures The Kreinitz lab at large in 2012 spring Kreinitz lab 2012 spring Click on image to see names of people Kreitman lab as of 2009 summer Manu, Bin, Anna, Cecelia, Sara, Marty, Jason (from left to right)