In the Gitschlag Laboratory, we are fascinated by biological complexity, and we seek to better understand it by studying how it evolves. We are especially interested in how the different evolutionary forces combine.

From molecules to cells to multicellular organisms, biological systems evolve through a complex interplay of different processes. For example, although natural selection has long been recognized as a key ingredient in evolution, multiple selection pressures may be simultaneously impacting how a genetic sequence evolves, making evolution difficult to predict. This is because even a single site in a sequence may affect multiple phenotypes (pleiotropy), and may interact with other sites (epistasis), meaning that the combined effect of several different mutations may not equal the sum of their individual effects. In addition to natural selection, systematic biases in the arrival of new mutations (mutation bias), as well as biases in the mapping from genotype to phenotype, exert their own influence on the course that evolution follows. To understand how living systems evolve, we develop and test models that integrate these various phenomena into comprehensive, predictive roadmaps of molecular evolution.

We are currently focused on details of molecular evolution that underlie fundamental aspects of animal biology, by investigating functional sequence motifs involved in the regulation of animal reproduction, development and lifespan. To do this, we take an interdiscplinary approach that combines computational approaches, including theoretical population-genetic modeling and statistical analysis, with laboratory experiments in the genetically tractable animal model Caenorhabditis elegans.