Everhart Lecture 2
Please join us for the second Everhart lecture of the year, organized by the Graduate Student Council and sponsored by the Graduate Studies office. The lecture, titled "Taming the diverse beasts within: Evolutionary innovations in piRNA-guided genome defense" will be presented by graduating PhD student, Peiwei Chen.
Abstract:
Far from a harmonious place, our DNA is a battleground, where different genes compete for inheritance. In particular, selfish genetic elements bias their own inheritance at the expense of the host genome, so they must be silenced to protect host reproduction. However, selfish genes "look" differently in different species, so how can we find them, and how are they controlled? In the Everhart Lecture, I will go over two discoveries I made that highlight two types of evolutionary innovations, which enable a robust genome defense against lineage-specific selfish genes.