Rachel Lockridge Mueller

Assistant Professor

rlm (at) colostate.edu

Rachel Schwartz

NSF Bioinformatics Fellow

rachel.schwartz (at) colostate.edu

Becky Chong

becky.chong (at) colostate.edu

    I am interested in how ecological processes shape gene flow among populations. To understand these processes and their effects, my research ranges from (1) basic descriptions of the relationships among species and populations (i.e. vertebrate systematics and population genetics), to (2) testing hypotheses for the environmental causes of population differentiation, to (3) evaluating and expanding on the methods used in systematics and population genetics.

    The goal of my postdoctoral research is to explore the characteristics of genes that allow accurate estimates of evolutionary relationships. Accurate estimates are critical because phylogenies are the basis for studies ranging from the evolution of phenotypic traits to the structure of ecological communities. I am using a combination of empirical data and large scale simulations to test the effects of evolutionary parameters, such as gene length and substitution rate, on the phylogenetic performance of genes.

CV (see website)        Website

Nick Jones  

najones (at) colostate.edu

    I came to Colorado State in 2007 after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at The University of Chicago, graduate studies at U.C. Berkeley and the D.O.E. Joint Genome Institute, and several years as a research associate at U.C. San Francisco. My primary research interests are in genome evolution and phylogenetics, but my research remains grounded in organismal biology and natural history.  Plethodontid salamanders have been the main focus of my research because they have not one but two unusual genomes — both their nuclear and their mitochondrial DNA is remarkable and illustrative of some fundamental processes governing genome evolution.  I emphasize the incorporation of genomic data into all types of research being conducted in the lab.

    I teach Herpetology (every Spring), Life 102 (alternate Fall semesters), and Molecular Evolution (alternate Spring semesters), as well as seminars addressing special topics in evolutionary biology and bioinformatics.

    I am generally interested in molecular evolution and phylogenetics. Specifically, I am interested in examining how the interaction between mutation and population structure affect genome size and content variation, which may ultimately lead to extreme genome expansion. Within the diverse salamander family Plethodontidae, the 6-species genus Aneides exhibits both nuclear and mitochondrial genome size variation, providing a tractable system in which to explore genome evolution in detail. 

    I joined the lab in August 2008.  Prior to coming to CSU, I was a researcher with Dr. Jim McGuire at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology where I studied the phylogeography of Bent-toed geckos (Genus Cyrtodactylus) on the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia.

CV (see website)         Website

Jessica Borden (May, 2009)

Senior Honors Thesis

   Jessica’s thesis addressed molecular evolution in a duplicated region of the mitochondrial genome in the plethodontid salamander species Batrachoseps attenuatus.

CV

Don Shepard

Postdoctoral Researcher

dshepard (at) mail.colostate.edu

Your Name Here

new.student (at) colostate.edu

We are looking for a new graduate student to join the lab for Fall, 2010!

If you are interested in developing a research program in molecular evolution, genome evolution, and/or phylogenetic systematics, please contact Rachel Mueller for more information.

    I joined the Mueller lab at Colorado State in November 2009 after finishing my PhD at the University of Oklahoma and doing a short postdoc at CUNY-Staten Island. My research on plethodontid salamanders is focused along two main lines: 1) the historical and ecological factors that promote lineage divergence and species diversification, and 2) nuclear genome evolution. Plethodontids have some of the largest genomes among vertebrates and exhibit a wide range of sizes, which is primarily attributed to variation in repeat element content. I am using 454 shotgun sequence data and working with our collaborators at the Consortium for Comparative Genomics at UC-Denver to characterize the repeat element content in several plethodontid genomes. In addition to providing the first picture of the repeat element landscape in salamanders, these studies will provide the foundation for future work on the factors that have allowed extreme genomic expansion in plethodontids and led to such variation in size among lineages.

    CV     

    Nick is working on genome size evolution in plethodontid salamanders. Using branch lengths estimated from a uniform molecular dataset he is currently generating, he will model the history of genome size evolution across the plethodontid phylogeny.

   Carrie’s research addressed molecular evolution in a duplicated region of the mitochondrial genome in the plethodontid salamander species Hydromantes brunus and Hydromantes platycephalus.

Carrie Foster (May, 2009)

Undergraduate Researcher