Willis lab and Mimulus!
Sorry for updating this late!
In Willis lab, most of the graduate students are studying Mimulus, which is a small yellow monkeyflower.
Mimulus is a good genetic research system which is being used to explain the genetic mechanisms of adaptation and speciation in an ecological context. Mimulus species contains a lot of attributes which facilitate genetic experimentation. For example, most of the Mimulus species in the genus are self-compatible and most of them have only a 6-12 week generation time under experimental conditions. So, the main goals for Willis lab, as they said, is to “understanding of the evolutionary dynamics of how species are formed, the origin of reproductive isolating barriers, mechanisms by which genetic variation is maintained, and the underyling genetic architecture of adaptive traits.”
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A pic of mimulus in green house.
See how cool these yellow flowers are!
Professor John Willis, he is a really nice professor.
My mentor David Lowry is a fifth year graduate student in the Duke University Program in Genetics and Genomic. He finished his undergraduate study at UC Berkeley. After graduated, he thought that he wanted to do some research which can combine ecology and molecular biology, so he picked Willis lab and started to study Mimulus. Yea, by the way, he is a great scientist.
So, his study is mainly focusing on the genetic adaptation of Mimulus guttatus, to the coast versus inland habitat, due to reproductive isolation. His current study, based on my understanding, is to figure out why the coast Mimulus species is salt tolerant and the inland one is not, and their genetic differences between the coast and inland Mimulus. The future application for this research is that if we can figure out which gene contribute salt tolerance, we can eventually apply this to crops and make them grow at high salt concentration place.
Therefore, my summer research is also focusing on salt tolerant of Mimulus guttatus and Yea, this right, it is a cool project.
David, transplanting plants.
My other mentor, Kevin Wright, he is also a fifth year graduate student at Duke University. His study is mainly focusing on the evolution of copper tolerance in Mimulus guttatus populations inhabiting mines in Copperopolis, CA. He is the most lovely and cutest guy in Willis lab. He is the first person I met in this lab and I have worked for him for late half year. Since he just back yesterday, so I do not know what we are going to do together this summer, but I know it is going to be a lot of fun time!
Kevin, I Steal this pic from his webpage. :-)
