Kirk Anders

Biography

Associate Professor of Biology Gonzaga University  Genetics and Evolution, BIOL 202 Developmental Biology, BIOL 337 Molecular Biology, BIOL 456 Advanced Topics, BIOL 399    Molecular Genetics    Evolution of Genes and Genomes    Developmental Genetics    Genetics and Evolution of Eye Developent    Synthetic Biology    

Research Interest

The long-term goal of our research is to exploit budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, as a model system for studying the mechanisms of genomic change during adaptive evolution (see "Why yeast?"). Genomes can change when a chromosome is gained or lost, resulting in aneuploidy. Aneuploid yeast strains are readily found in the laboratory (often by accident), presumably because they provide some growth advantage in a deleterious genetic background (1). However, long-term continuous cultures of nominally wild-type strains, in industry and in the lab, can also lead to the appearance of aneuploidy and chromosome rearrangements (eg, refs 2 and 3). Despite the widespread existence of aneuploidies, there is little basic information about the phenotypic effect of an extra chromosome in a wild-type genetic background, and how (or if) the aneuploidy contributes to increased fitness in long-term cultures. Are aneuploidies phenotypically neutral events in yeast? Are they deleterious? How do the gene dosage imbalances of each particular chromosome affect the phenotype? Answers to these basic questions should provide a foundation for the study and interpretation of aneuploidies arising in long-term experimental evolution cultures. In order to answer these basic questions, aneuploid strains need to be constructed in a controlled genetic background.