The Woolly Mammoth always attracts attention, which is why PBS Digital Studios explores How To Build A Woolly Mammoth (But Should We?) Presented by PBS Eons, host Blake de Pastino observes, "In the quest to understand how evolution basically built the woolly mammoth, we may have found the blueprints for building them ourselves." Vincent Lynch's research on elephantoid genome is cited throughout the episode. View the video, here.
Genetics, Genomics and Systems Biology; Evolutionary Biology.
PhD, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, 2008
MS, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, 2005
BS, Biology and Anthropology, University at Albany, SUNY, 2002
Contact vjlynch@buffalo.edu
A major challenge in biology is to determine the genetic and molecular mechanisms responsible for phenotypic differences between species (DevoEvo), particularly mechanisms that underlie the origin of new anatomical structures (‘evolutionary novelties’), biological functions (‘evolutionary innovations’), and that limit biological possibilities (‘developmental constraints’). To explore how evolutionary novelties, innovations, and developmental constraints evolve we combine comparative genomics and experimental methods to deduce the molecular mechanisms that underlie the evolution of pregnancy and animals with extremely long lifespans and large body sizes, and the role evolutionary history plays in our susceptibility to diseases such as preterm birth and cancer.
Evolutionary mechanics of adhesion complexes that mediate Amniote hearing