Dr. Andolfatto obtained his Ph.D. in genetics from the University of Chicago in 1999, working with MacArthur Prize winner Professor Martin Kreitman. He was then awarded an EMBO long-term postdoctoral fellowship and moved to the University of Edinburgh to work with Professor Brian Charlesworth, FRS, a Royal Society Research Professor. He quickly initiated a number of ongoing projects on the role of natural selection and chance events in the evolution of Drosophila populations. Since 2003, he has been an Assistant Professor of Zoology at the University of Toronto, where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Evolutionary Genetics (Tier II). Dr. Andolfatto’s research has focused on a major current problem in evolutionary biology, the role of natural selection in the adaptation of populations. He is a pioneer in the new field of genomic evolution — the use of genetic markers distributed throughout the genome to follow how evolution happens. More recently, Dr. Andolfatto turned his attention to the question of speciation and the formation of hybrid zones in the North American swallowtail butterfly Papilio glaucus, the species that came to the interest of geneticists 45 years ago. He is one of the first to realize that because it is now possible to monitor many genetic markers in populations simultaneously, the process of speciation as well as the history of individual populations, can now also be followed in detail. Dr. Andolfatto is now embarking on a series of truly innovative experiments, using the rosy locus in the fruit fly Drosophila, to determine in detail how genetic recombination varies in different parts of the genome. This information is essential if we are to understand how the other evolutionary processes interact — natural selection, for example, can have quite different results if it acts on loci in a freely recombining part of the genome or if it takes place in a region where recombination is restricted. This work will be a cornerstone in our understanding of the new field of genomic evolution.
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Dr. Timothy Baker
Molecular Biology Section

Dr. Colin Jamora received his Ph.D. in Biology from the University of California, San Diego and performed his postdoctoral studies at the University of Chicago and Rockefeller University. Using mammalian hair follicle development as a model system for the development of a variety of organs such as the liver, lung and pancreas, Dr. Jamora has found an unsuspected link between proteins at the cell surface that mediate the adhesion of cells to one another and the nucleus, where transcriptional regulation of gene expression occurs. Specifically, he has uncovered a novel mechanism by which cell adhesion proteins known as cadherins coordinate the decision of a cell to adopt into a particular cell fate. Such cells then change their morphology to one required to generate a particular organ. In doing so, Dr. Jamora is one of a handful of biologists who are actually looking at the cellular basis of the complex developmental process of organogenesis. Dr. Jamora is a highly trained cell biologist and mammalian developmental biologist.
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Dr. Jetz obtained his Pre-Diploma in Biology at Würzburg University, Germany, in 1996. He then moved to Oxford University, U.K., and completed a Master of Science with Distinction in Integrative Bioscience in 1997. In 2001, he completed a Doctor of Philosophy in Zoology at Oxford University. His thesis on the Biodiversity of African birds was completed under the direction of Professor Paul Harvey, F.R.S. Following graduation he worked for a few months at Conservation International, Washington, D.C., as a Research Fellow. In 2002 he received an National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biocomplexity at the University of New Mexico to work with the renowned biogeographer James H. Brown. He continued this work during 2002–2003 with a DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Postdoctoral Fellowship. Since October 2003, he has been a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University. Dr. Jetz is interested in the way local environment determines ecological attributes of individuals and how these in turn affect populations and communities to form patterns at the scale of the whole globe.
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Dr. Kiger received her Ph.D. in Developmental Biology from Stanford University in 2001, followed by a postdoctoral experience in the laboratory of Dr. Norbert Perrimon at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School. There she pioneered a large-scale analysis of cell biological processes using the newly discovered function of RNA interference in the regulation of gene expression. In just three years as a postdoctoral fellow, and despite the tremendous obstacles presented by the scale-up and automation in Drosophila cells of transfection, gene inactivation, and phenotypic characterization, Dr. Kiger authored two studies of substantial import and impact. The first, which appeared in 2003, reported an RNAi based analysis of the function of approximately 1,000 known and predicted cell shape regulators. This work identified cell shape defects for more than 50 loci that had not been previously characterized phenotypically. As significant as the wealth of information inherent in the phenotypes described is, the greatest contribution of this work was probably the inherent transformation of the landscape for genetic investigation of cell biology in higher eukaryotes. In a second area of her postdoctoral research, Dr. Kiger and another fellow in the Perrimon laboratory conducted the first genome-wide description of all of the RNA transcripts required for controlling cell proliferation, growth, and survival.
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