USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Summary Statement of Research Interests

• My research focuses on the study of the genetic basis of evolution at all levels. My PhD was centered on micro- and macroevolution of marine organisms. I worked on a wide variety of topics, including population genetics, phylogeography and phylogenetics of hakes, megrims and barnacles, as well as on evolution of the 5S rRNA gene family in fish. Currently, as a postdoc, my research centers on the study of the genotype-phenotype connection and evolution of gene expression. I am working on a project aimed to identify the polymorphisms responsible for variation in gene expression in Drosophila, estimate the relative contribution of cis- and trans- regulatory variation and determine the common modes of natural selection acting on these variants. Using an Illumina Genome Analyzer IIx, we are generating whole genome and transcriptome sequence data of isogenic fly lines derived from wild populations and a bunch of crosses between them. I am also part of the Center of Excelence in Genomic Science (CEGS), focused on the genomic analysis of the genotype-to-phenotype map. The overall goal of the CEGS is to develop an intellectual framework, together with computational and statistical analysis tools, for illuminating the path from genotype to phenotype, and for predicting the latter from the former.