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General Research Interests
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Broadly, I
am interested in population genetics, evolutionary genetics, and
phylogenetics. In the Igic lab I am excited to be able to apply
all my above interests to the study of plant mating systems.
Plant mating systems determine which individuals mate and thus
influence the amount and distribution of genetic
variation within populations and have a large effect
on a species' evolutionary trajectory. In nature there
exists a variety of mechanisms through which outcrossing is
achieved. Self-incompatibility (SI), the ability of a plant to
recognize and reject its own pollen, is thought to be the major force
enforcing outcrossing in plants. I am currently involved in two
different projects that deal with different aspects of SI systems in
angiosperms. |
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Current Projects
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The
occurence of S-RNase based SI
One
homomorphic SI system, the gametophytic based S-RNase system, is found
in the greatly diverged families of Solanaceae, Plantaginaceae, and
Rosaceae and is thought to be the ancestral state of ~75% of extant
eudicots (Igic and Kohn 2001; Steinbachs and Holsinger 2002). GSI
systems with unknown molecular mechanisms are known to operate in at
least 33 other eudicot families (Igic et al. 2008). I am
currently in the process of
attempting to find the ancestral S-RNase based GSI system in a subset
of these families. |
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The
distribution of breeding systems
I am
currently finishing up a project about the distribution of breeding
systems in seed plants by looking at the occurrence of SI across
species collected from a previous literature search and exploring
various patterns within the data. |