Education holds the promise of preparing students to be engaged, thriving participants in a socially just democracy. For that ideal to occur, the structure and experience of the classroom must reflect both its constituents and consider the socially just imaginaries in which we would all like to inhabit. Using examples from the civil rights era's interrogation of our society, we will explore how an introductory biology course can help fulfill higher

https://www.as.uky.edu/Dewsbury%20Seminar%20F23

 Dr. Andy Sih | Sih Lab

Andy Sih’s laboratory works on the evolution of ecologically important behaviors (predator-prey, mating, and social behaviors) life history traits, and how these influence population and community ecological patterns,  Most projects examine freshwater organisms e.g., fish amphibian larvae, crayfish, insects and other freshwater invertebrates.  Current applied ecological interests include studying effects of pesticides on predator-prey interactions, and behavioral mechanisms underlying species invasions.

Dr. Vinod Kumar | Kumar Lab

Abstract:
Cycles in biological systems are all-pervasive in nature. Birds, like any other species, express daily rhythms in activity/rest, hormone secretion, and several other rhythmic characteristics. Most bird species also show long-term cycles in feeding behavior, body fattening (in migrants), reproduction, molt, or migration. Both daily and seasonal behaviors are under the strict control of the endogenous clock mechanisms, but the role of the environment remains critical for optimal performance and ultimately survival. Synchrony with the environment is achieved through the interaction of clock components with external cues (e.g. photoperiod), and internal coordination among different rhythmic physiological correlates is achieved through neural and endocrine signaling. Thus, we are interested to learn about how birds achieve precision in timing their daily and seasonal activities in sync with the periodic environment. Our research effort mainly centers around the “Avian Circadian and Seasonal Systems: Study from Behavior to Molecules”. The working hypothesis has been that specialized cells localized in different tissues express genes involved in the clock circuitry, and different cell populations control the food intake, body fattening, reproductive axis, molt, and migration, in a way that each event can be timed and spaced with each other to optimize an ecological adaptation. 

Click here for more information about Dr. Sarah Tishkoff.

Abstract:

Africa is thought to be the ancestral homeland of all modern human populations.  It is also a region of tremendous cultural, linguistic, climatic, and genetic diversity.   Despite the important role that African populations have played in human history, they remain one of the most underrepresented groups in human genomics studies. A comprehensive knowledge of patterns of variation in African genomes is critical for a deeper understanding of human genomic diversity, the identification of functionally important genetic variation, the genetic basis of adaptation to diverse environments and diets, and for reconstructing modern human origins. African populations practice diverse subsistence patterns (hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, agriculturalists, and agro-pastoralists) and live in diverse environments with differing pathogen exposure (tropical forest, savannah, coastal, desert, low altitude, and high altitude) and, therefore, are likely to have experienced local adaptation. In this talk I will discuss results of analyses of genome-scale genetic variation in geographically, linguistically, and ethnically diverse African populations in order to reconstruct human evolutionary history in Africa, African and African American ancestry, as well as the genetic basis of adaption to diverse environments.

Dr. Christopher Vulpe | Vulpe Lab

Bio: 
Chris Vulpe, MD, PhD. is a Professor at the University of Florida, Gainesville in the Center for Environmental
and Human Toxicology. Dr. Vulpe received his MD and PhD from the University of California, San Francisco.
Dr. Vulpe’s group uses systems level approaches in eukaryotes from yeast to people to identify the functional
components that respond to and modulate the consequences of environmental stressors. Most recently, his laboratory is utilizing genome wide and targeted CRISPR screens to understand the mechanisms of toxicity of environmental chemicals. Dr. Vulpe is an author or co-author on >175 papers in peer reviewed journals and books. His group uses functional, genomic, and genetic approaches to provide insight into mechanisms of toxicity in diverse model systems including human models such as human cell culture, organoids, and rodents, as well as ecologically relevant organisms such as Daphnia magna.
 

Dr. Francois Spitz | Spitz Lab

Bio:
PhD from Université Paris 6 (France)
Group Leader at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (2006-2015) (Heidelberg, Germany)
Head of Research Unit at the Institut Pasteur (2015-2019) (Paris, France)
Professor, The University of Chicago (2019-.)

Abstract:
The mechanisms that regulate the efficiency and specificity of interactions between distant genes and cis-regulatory elements such as enhancers play a central role in shaping the specific regulatory programs that control cell fate and identity. In particular, the (epi)genetic elements that organize the 3D folding of the genome in specific loops and domains have emerged as key determinants of this process. I will discuss our current views on how 3D genome architecture is organized, how it influences gene regulatory interactions and illustrate how alterations of the mechanisms and elements that organize genomes in 3D could contribute to genomic disorders and genome evolution.

Dr. Blake Meyers | Meyers Lab

BIO: 
Blake Meyers is a Member & Principal Investigator at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St.
Louis, and he is a Professor in the Division of Plant Science and Technology at the University of
Missouri - Columbia. He formerly held the Edward F. and Elizabeth Goodman Rosenberg
professorship at the University of Delaware, where his research group was from 2002 to 2015. He
was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2012,
and a Fellow of the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) in 2017, the same year he was
awarded the Charles Albert Shull Award by the ASPB for outstanding investigations in the field of
plant biology. He was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2022. After serving on the
editorial board since 2008, Blake became the Editor-in-Chief of The Plant Cell in January 2020. Work
in his lab addresses the biological functions, biogenesis, genomic impact, and evolution of small
RNAs in diverse plant species, using combination of genomic and molecular genetics approaches,
with a focus on phased, secondary siRNAs (“phasiRNAs”).

He received his undergraduate degree in biology from the University of Chicago in 1992, and
working with Prof. Richard Michelmore at UC Davis, was awarded M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in genetics in 1995 and 1998, respectively. After that, he did a postdoc with Prof. Michele Morgante at DuPont Crop Genetics, working on maize genomics for 2 years before returning to Prof. Michelmore’s group at UC Davis in 2000 to do a 2nd postdoc on Arabidopsis disease resistance. In 2002, Blake started his
own research group at the University of Delaware. He was the chair of the Department of Plant & Soil Sciences at the University of Delaware from 2009 to 2015.

Abstract:
In plants, 21 or 22-nt miRNAs or siRNAs typically negatively regulate target genes through mRNA cleavage or translational inhibition. Heterochromatic or Pol IV are 24-nt and function to maintain heterochromatin and silence transposons. Phased “secondary” siRNAs (phasiRNAs) are generated from mRNAs targeted by a typically 22-nt “trigger” miRNA, and are produced as either 21- or 24-mers via distinct pathways. Our prior work in maize and rice demonstrated the temporal and spatial distribution of two sets of “reproductive phasiRNAs”, which are extraordinarily enriched in the male germline of the grasses. These two sets are the 21-nt (pre-meiotic) and 24-nt (meiotic) siRNAs. Both classes are produced from long, non-coding RNAs, generated by hundreds to thousands of loci, depending on the species. These phased siRNAs show striking similarity to mammalian piRNAs in terms of their abundance, distribution, distinctive staging, and timing of accumulation, but they have independent evolutionary origins. The functions for these small RNAs in plants remain poorly characterized. I will describe our recent work investigating the functions of plant phasiRNAs and their roles in modulating traits of agronomic importance in plants, including male fertility, as well as novel applications of phasiRNAs such as those generated from transplastomic plants.

Dr. Sally Chambers

Abstract:
Kentucky is a botanically diverse state home to over 2,000 native plants and more than 400 taxa that are of conservation concern. Kentucky’s native plants are phylogenetically diverse, and a subset of taxa reflect Kentucky’s geologic history as tropical relicts. This is especially true for the ferns in Kentucky, as many species occupy sandstone rock shelters which buffer extreme climatic conditions much like cave ecosystems. These microclimatic pockets create unique distribution patterns for the ferns that occupy this niche space, and even further partition the fern life cycle such that some crevices host only gametophytes while others host both gametophyte and sporophyte generations. This talk will focus on decades of work conducted in these unique rock shelter environments and the spatial differentiation of fern generations (gametophyte/sporophyte) in Kentucky, the Appalachians and beyond. Ecological research focusing on topics such as local adaptation, physiological tolerance limits, and population differentiation will be discussed. The remainder of the talk will highlight the botanical resources housed at Eastern Kentucky University and the utility of these natural history collections to scientists worldwide.

Dr. Maria Antonietta Tosches | Tosches Lab

Abstract:
The cerebral cortex is arguably the brain area that underwent the most profound transformations in vertebrate brain evolution. The expansion of the cerebral cortex in mammals was accompanied by an explosion of neuronal diversity. To discover general principles underlying the evolution of neuron types and circuits, we study the simple cerebral cortices of non-mammalian vertebrates. Our recent work has focused on the Spanish newt Pleurodeles waltl, a species with a key phylogenetic position in the vertebrate tree. We are investigating the neuroanatomy, cell type composition, and function of the Pleurodeles brain using a combination of modern neuroscience tools.

Our work on amphibians and reptiles indicates that the cerebral cortex of ancestral tetrapods was layered, with two main classes of neurons with distinct laminar positions, molecular identities, and long-range projections. In salamanders, these two layers are generated sequentially from multipotent progenitors in an outside-in sequence. We propose that in mammals new types of pyramidal neurons evolved from these two ancestral classes by diversification, through the emergence of novel gene regulatory interactions during neuronal differentiation.