Beryl Jones
University of Kentucky, KY·Ecology & Evolution
The same genes can produce very different bodies and behaviors depending on the environment and stage of life, a flexibility called phenotypic plasticity. That flexibility is controlled by gene regulatory networks (GRNs), the webs of genes and switches that decide which genes turn on and when.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Genetics
- Topics
gene regulatory networks
phenotypic plasticity
social behavior
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2029
What they work on
- Identify changes in gene regulatory networks (GRNs) linked to evolutionary gains and losses of social behavior across bee species that differ in sociality.
- Profile developmental stages and behavioral types within bee species at the molecular level to determine how GRNs generate plasticity in social traits.
- Use experimental manipulation of shared trans-regulatory environments and massively parallel reporter assays, which test many DNA regulatory sequences at once, to find context-dependent gene regulation across bee species.
More about the research
How these networks change over evolution, and how they produce new traits, is poorly understood. That gap makes it hard to predict how changing environments will affect organisms. This project uses social behavior in bees as a test case.
Why it matters
This is basic science. It aims to reveal how gene regulatory networks are rewired as new traits evolve, using social behavior in bees as an emerging model system. That understanding could eventually help predict how new or changing environments shape organisms' traits and the evolutionary consequences of those changes.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Anat Kreimer
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Genetics
Develop methods that integrate massively parallel reporter assay (MPRA) data, which test thousands of DNA sequences at once, with other genomic assays and deep learning to reconstruct cell-type-specific gene regulatory networks and their condition-specific regulators.
Patricia Wittkopp
University of Michigan, MI·Genetics
Identify the genes and specific DNA changes behind trait differences within and between fruit fly (Drosophila) species, and determine how they alter molecular, cellular and developmental processes.
Hyejung Won
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Genetics
Develop single-cell massively parallel reporter assays (scMPRA), which combine DNA barcoding with single-cell RNA sequencing, to measure thousands of Alzheimer's-linked regulatory elements in different brain cell types at once.
The school
University of Kentucky: 34 labs on PI Pages, $528M a year on research, 319 research doctorates a year.
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