Teleost development & evolution

The Cresko and Postlethwait labs are studying the evolution of duplicated genes and genomes, and their relationship to organismal diversity. Half of all vertebrate species are teleost fish, and recent evidence suggest that genomic features, including a whole-genome duplication event at the base of the ray-fin fish, may have played a significant role in the teleost radiation. We examine how the partitioning of ancestral subfunctions between gene copies may affect the lineage-specific diversification of developmental programs.