Manyuan Long
(Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago, Chicago)
Current position:
- Associate Professor
Department of Ecology and Evolution
Committee on Evolutionary Biology
Committee on Genetics
- Faculty Member
Biological Sciences Collegiate Division
Research interests:
A fundamental problem in evolutionary biology is how genes with novel functions originate. My research focuses on this problem, although I am also interested in other issues of molecular evolution. A complete process of origin of new genes consists of initial molecular events that create new gene structures and subsequent population dynamics that fix new mutations across species. It is this process that requires an integrated approach incorporating both molecular and population analyses. My lab applies such an approach to our studies. We have succeeded in identifying new genes from a group of Drosophila species. Using molecular analysis, we revealed some important molecular evolutionary mechanisms responsible for their current gene structures. By population genetic analysis, we observed a significant role of the adaptive evolution in the determination of the fate of those new genes. As a complement to the experimental research, we have also developed evolutionary genomics techniques to assess the general importance of exon shuffling that controls the initial molecular phase, in conjunction with statistical and mathematical analyses of the current databases. Our approach differs from the traditional molecular evolution, where the molecular novelties are neglected, and from the traditional gene evolution, where the information from single or a few genes is often inadequate. Our integrated approach allows us to derive more testable predictions so that we can study both details and broad perspectives in the evolution of new genes.
References:
Manyuan Long publications at PubMed.
Contact:
Office: Zoology 301E
Phone: 773-702-0557
Fax: 773-702-9740
Email: mlong@midway.uchicago.edu
