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• OrcID: 0000-0003-3742-7692

I am interested in the evolution of regulatory novelty in hybrids. What happens when gene regulation machineries that have evolved in isolation become merged in hybrids? Can this generate novel expression levels, expression patterns, or even splicing variants that differ from those observed in the parents? And how does such regulatory novelty evolve in natural populations?

I aim to study this using Bacillus stick insects as a model. Here, I can compare lab-generated early generation hybrids with independently derived wild stable hybrid lineages of two sorts: sexual hybrid populations that have been backcrossing during their evolution; and F1 hybrid lineages that have lost canonical sex thousands of years ago, and evolved under different ploidy levels.

Specifically, I want to address four questions: 1) What are the factors underpinning regulatory novelty in early generation (F1+F2) hybrids? Is it mixing of regulatory elements from different parents (a)? Are epigenetic mechanisms and TEs involved (b)? Is there an effect of interparental divergence (c)? 2) How does gene regulation evolve in stable sexual hybrid zones: is regulatory novelty selectively beneficial and adaptive? 3) How does gene regulation evolve under a clonal subgenome inheritance? 4) Can an increase in subgenome ploidy in triploids generate dosage dependent regulatory novelty, and how does it evolve? 

The ability to integrate all these questions using a single model organism promises to yield very comprehensive, yet, detailed insights into the role that regulatory evolution in hybrids plays in shaping the diversity of life.