John Pool's Lab studies Population Genomics and the Genetic Basis of Adaptive Evolution at the University of Wisconsin – Madison
Latest Pool Lab News...
Winter 2025:
~ Chris McAllester's substantial study establishing a novel model for sexual antagonism maintaining polymorphic inversions, and finding evidence of this model for Drosophila melanogaster inversions, is published in final form at eLife.
~ John is nominated as the 4th Director of Wisconsin Evolution (The J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution).
Fall 2024:
~ Siyuan Feng's study on environmental adaptation in the crop pest Drosophila suzukii appears at Genome Biology & Evolution.
Summer 2024:
~ Dr. Matthew Lollar becomes the 4th scientist to earn a PhD from the Pool Lab!
Spring 2024:
~ The lab has new manuscripts on: (1) The power of population branch statistics to detect local adaptation, (2) Using new panels of recombinant inbred lines to test for genetic interactions, and (3) Mapping population differences in courtship song.
Winter 2024:
~ Dr. Tiago da Silva Ribeiro becomes the 3rd scientist to earn a PhD from the Pool Lab! Now he will bring his expertise back home to the University of São Paulo in a postdoc with Rodrigo Cogni.
~ Eleyna Escobedo graduates and receives a UW medical school full scholarship!
Fall 2023:
~ Our collaborative study using museum Drosophila genomes to investigate 200 years of evolution (together with Marcus Stensmyr, and led by Max Shpak) is online at PLOS Biology! (news release)
~ Chris McAllester's study on antagonistic inversions under balancing selection is online as a pre-print, and was selected for review at eLife.
~ Chris McAllester wins the Chair's Broader Impact Award from UW Genetics!
Spring 2023:
~ Matt Lollar's study on hybrid breakdown within D. melanogaster appears in Evolution.
~ Myron Child receives an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship! (and travels to The Gambia)
~ John has released a public talk on "The Importance of Africa for Drosophila Research".
Winter 2023:
~ John is now making population genetics course materials (including recorded lectures) available online.
Fall 2022:
~ Tiago's study on using SNP-level FST patterns to detect local soft sweeps appears in GBE.
Spring 2022:
~ We have 2 more accepted papers... First, we show how natural selection can have diverse influences on the relationship between recombination and introgression (in MBE). Second, we show that adaptive gene regulatory evolution tends to neutralize phenotypic plasticity (in GBE).
Winter 2022:
~ Welcome to Myron Child as a new PhD student!
~ We have 3 more new papers: an MBE paper looks at genomic changes across ~500 generations of natural evolution, while two others examine the genetic architecture of adaptive changes in alcohol resistance and size.
Summer 2021:
~ Jamie Freeman and Dr. Max Shpak join the lab as research staff.
~ We have a new paper in Genetics on transcriptome adaptation.
~ Congratulations to recent graduates Clarice Danen, Olivia Gargulak, and Zach Johnson!
Winter 2021:
~ Congratualtions to Dr's Jeremy Lange and Quentin Sprengelmeyer on their successful PhD thesis defenses!
Fall 2020:
~ Siyuan Feng joins the lab as a new PhD student!
Spring 2020:
~ Maud Duranton joins the lab as a new postdoc!
~ Thank you NIH! John receives an R35 MIRA grant.
~ Marcus Stensmyr's "wild fly" art graces the MBE cover in conjunction with our paper on D. melanogaster origin and history.
Fall 2019:
~ Our study on wilderness African flies, their genomes, and species history is published in MBE.
Spring 2019:
~ John returns from sabbatical work in Puerto Rico, California, and Utah.
Fall 2018:
~ Thank you NIH! The lab is receiving a new R01 grant, in collaboration with Mark Rebeiz.
~ Our collaboration with Marcus Stensmyr is bearing fruit: Marula as an ancestral host fruit for Drosophila melanogaster (see NPR coverage).
~ Tanager J. Pool becomes the lab's 6th baby in its 7 year history, and John's 1st. And then, Isla Sprengelmeyer becomes #7.
Summer 2018:
~ 2 new accepted papers! (1) Selective sweeps may not undermine demographic inference in flies, and (2) Directional selection undermines genetic and environmental robustness.
Spring 2018:
~ Thank you NSF! The lab gets a new grant on parallel cold tolerance evolution, and Chris McAllester gets a Graduate Research Fellowship!
~ Vedika Ramesh graduates!
Winter 2018:
~ Welcome to Matt Lollar as a new PhD student, and to Juliana Cordeiro as a visiting professor!
Summer 2017:
~ Welcome to Murillo Fernando Rodrigues as a visiting graduate student!
Spring 2017:
~ Audrey Simard, Ben Groth, Grant Hoppel, & Matt Monette graduate!
~ John gets tenure! (his seminar is HERE)
Winter 2017:
~ Welcome to Chris McAllester & Tiago Ribeiro as new PhD students!
Fall 2016:
~ John was on the Whad'ya Know Podcast! Skip ahead in this VIDEO to 2:11:22.
~ We have *4* new papers accepted at Genetics and MBE! (see Papers and John's TAGC talk)
Summer 2016:
~ The Pool Lab welcomes Yuheng Huang as a new postdoctoral researcher!
~ Version 1.1 of the Drosophila Genome Nexus is HERE.
~ Amir is co-first author on a Current Biology paper on the recurrent origin of a sexually-dimorphic trait (Article) (Press Release)
Spring 2016:
~ Amir Yassin led our PNAS study on a novel fly population that specializes on a toxic fruit! (Article) (Press Release) (John's talk at Evolution 2016)
~ Congratulations to Amir on his prestigious faculty position at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris! (LINK)
~ Vedika Ramesh received a Sophomore Research Fellowship for her population genomic analysis of olfactory receptor genes!
Winter 2016:
~ Our 2 new papers are featured in this UW press release! Our PNAS paper shows that wing size evolution entailed a loss of developmental buffering. Our Nature Communications paper shows the genetic basis of a female-specific color dimorphism under ancient balancing selection, and even inspired a Shakespearean sonnet, "Rough in Love" (Text) (Audio)
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