Research
- Evolutionary capacitors are molecular mechanisms that are able to tap into stocks of cryptic genetic variation. Just as an electronic capacitor stores and releases charge, an evolutionary capacitor stores and releases genetic variation. We study the yeast prion [PSI+] as a model system for evolutionary capacitance, using both theoretical population genetic and comparative genomic / bioinformatic approaches. [PSI+] is an epigenetically inherited aggregate of the Sup35 protein, which is a release factor required for translation to terminate at stop codons. When [PSI+] appears, elevated readthrough occurs at every gene in the genome. A range of pre-existing genetic variation beyond stop codons then ceases to be cryptic, and is instead phenotypically revealed.
- We model the evolution of networks of transcriptional regulators in order to study emergent properties such as canalization (also known as robustness), genetic assimilation and evolutionary capacitance. Read more…
- The infectious agent in diseases such as scrapie and Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease contains no nucleic acid. How do it manage to replicate without any DNA or RNA? We developed mathematical models of various proposed mechanisms of protein-only replication, and found one that stood up best to quantitative comparisons with in vivo data. Analyzing this model allows us to make predictions for drug design. Read more…
- When you put humans in a room and make them play out dilemmas of game theory for real money, you get very rich sets of behavioral data that can be very hard to explain. We developed a novel model of human behavior based on people using the reasoning “What if everybody else thought like me?” More technically, it is a model of maximizing conditional expected utility under a framework of quasi-magical thinking. Read more…