People in the Wagner Lab Research in the Wagner Lab A long term goal of the research in this lab is to gain an understanding of the evolution and evolvability of gene networks.
Molecular biology is concerned with the minutiae of a machinery of daunting complexity.
Organismal biology, on the oher hand, operates on a level of organisation far removed from this machinery. In between, we are faced with a huge gap in our knowledge, a gap that needs to be filled in order to understand observed patterns in both molecular evolution and organismal evolution. For example, we do not understand why some genes embedded in highly conserved developmental pathways can evolve rapidly, while others do not. We do no understand what causes basic body plan features of many organisms to show very little variation, even if subjected to high mutation pressure, while other characters are very sensitive to both environmental and genetic perturbations. To answer these and similar questions, we must better understand the general principles that underly the evolution of gene networks, especially those involved in developmental processes.