What we study

Interactions among organisms can result in reciprocal adaptation, a phenomenon called coevolution. Coevolution has driven much of the diversification of life on Earth. Humans are also the unwitting beneficiaries of these ancient reciprocal evolutionary dynamics because half of our medicines come from natural products arising from the Darwinian “war of nature.”

In our laboratory, we use genome editing and other molecular and genomics tools to retrace the path that coevolution has taken. This approach allows us to “replay the tape” of evolution and dissect how adaptation among species has unfolded. We use as models coevolving species from diverse systems including plant-herbivore and herbivore-natural enemy antagonisms that revolve around toxins produced as defenses, as well as hummingbird-plant mutualisms. Our goal is to illuminate the molecular mechanisms that underlie the origin of new adaptations and new lineages that arise through interactions among organisms.

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