Caitlin Smukowski Heil
North Carolina State University, NC·Genetics
When cells make eggs or sperm, matching chromosomes swap pieces in a process called meiotic recombination. Recombination is needed to sort chromosomes correctly, and errors can cause infertility and miscarriage.
- Fields
Genetics
Ecology & Evolution
Biology
- Topics
meiotic recombination
recombination rate
meiosis
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- Build genome-wide recombination maps for multiple Saccharomyces uvarum populations using whole genome sequencing, and compare how double-strand breaks are repaired as crossovers versus non-crossover gene conversions.
- Test whether adapting to higher temperature changes recombination rate or the balance of crossover and gene conversion events, by evolving cold-tolerant S. uvarum in the lab and sequencing them.
- Test whether introgressed DNA is reduced in low-recombination regions after hybridization, by evolving admixed S. uvarum strains and comparing introgression patterns to recombination maps.
More about the research
It also shuffles gene variants, creating the genetic diversity that natural selection acts on. How often recombination happens, called the recombination rate, varies across the genome, between populations and between species. Why it changes remains largely unknown. This research program uses yeast, evolved in the laboratory and studied by genome sequencing, to test genetic and environmental causes of recombination rate change and its effects on genome evolution.
Why it matters
Failed recombination during meiosis can lead to infertility, aneuploidy (wrong chromosome numbers), genomic instability and spontaneous abortion. By revealing the genetic and environmental forces that make recombination rates change, this basic research in yeast adds understanding of how genomes evolve. It could eventually inform how we think about chromosome-sorting errors and genetic diversity in other organisms.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Nathaniel Sharp
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Ecology & Evolution
Test whether yeast cells of a species' rarer type, haploid or diploid, have higher mutation rates, by measuring ploidy-specific mutation patterns in haploid- and diploid-dominant yeast species.
Diana Libuda
University of Oregon, OR·Genetics
Test how specific meiotic chromosome structures regulate and respond to repair pathway and partner choice, using in vivo assays in C. elegans that directly detect use of the sister chromatid as a repair template during prophase I.
William Murphy
Texas A&M University-College Station, TX·Ecology & Evolution
Reconstruct how mammalian chromosomes and their recombination rates changed from a roughly 100-million-year-old inferred ancestor to living species, by pairing chromosome-level genome assemblies with recombination maps.
The school
North Carolina State University: 40 labs on PI Pages, $717M a year on research, 603 research doctorates a year.
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