I am interested in how animal diversity relates to evolution of the genome. When we compare genome sequences between species, we find hundreds of examples of gene duplications, novel genes and gene sequences changing rapidly in evolution. These are different from the much-studied small regulatory changes that tweak expression of conserved genes. We want to work out how these major genomic changes contributed to the diversification of animals.
Our group is part of the ‘Darwin Tree of Life’ project, funded by the Wellcome Trust, which aims to sequence the genome of all key species in the ecosystems of Britain and Ireland. Our lab has already collected 2500 animal species for this project, mostly from Wytham Woods, and over 1000 complete genomes have been sequenced. We are exploring these data, mapping genomic changes through evolution; all these data are also freely available for anyone to analyse.
In the University of Oxford Biology degree course, I teach Diversity of Life in the First year, and Genome Evolution and Evolution & Development in the Third year.
Outside Oxford, I am Chair of the Board of the Earlham Institute, a BBSRC strategically supported research institute in Norwich, and I sit on the Royal Society Newton International Fellowship panel.
