My research interests aim to examine how variations in an animal’s natural environment are transduced through its genotype to ultimately structure phenotype. I am fascinated by the interplay between an animal’s environment and the organism’s physiological plasticity to respond to environmental change.
A few questions that make me tick:
What is the ecological significance of physiological plasticity? To what capacity do organisms inhabiting a variable environment utilize this plasticity? Is this plasticity sufficient to maintain their distribution in light of a rapidly changing global environment?
As temperature is one of the key abiotic factors influencing organismal distribution, how does an animal’s thermal history integrate with immediate fluctuations in their natural environment to structure their physiological response to environmental change? Does the influence of thermal history vary between eurythermal and stenothermal organisms?
What components of an animal’s transcriptome (mRNA transcripts) are entrained by the predictable nature of the environment and what are the underlying mechanisms that regulate this?
How do gene expression and protein profiles shift with fluctuations in an organism’s natural environment? Is there disconnect between increased expression of a particular gene and an increase in the associated protein? What is the significance of transcriptional vs. post-transcriptional regulation of particular pathways in organisms living in variable environments?
In my PhD thesis I focused mainly on the role of temperature in modulating the heat shock protein response of an intertidal sculpin. The majority my field research was conducted at the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre in tidepools where my research questions addressed the temporal and spatial variability of the thermal environment.
Currently in the lab of Dr. Hofmann, I am using genomics approaches to look more comprehensively at the physiological constraints imposed by an animal’s natural environment. My postdoctoral research focuses on the molecular physiology of cold-adaptation in Antarctic fish species, specifically the mechanisms underlying how these animals are able to maintain integrity of the cellular protein pool at sub-zero temperatures. Although cold-denaturation of proteins is well documented, the consequences of inhabiting a sub-zero environment and defending protein homeostasis are poorly understood. While these fish have many adaptations that provide them with impressive resistance to the cold (ex. antifreeze proteins), the stable subzero Antarctic environment may be more perturbing to the formation and maintenance of native protein structures than once thought. The focus of our investigations is to understand how Antarctic fish cope with cold-related protein damage and misfolding as well as to more broadly understand how gene expression may have been altered in Antarctic fish as an adaptation to near-freezing temperatures. Through comparison with their cold temperate New Zealand relatives, Antarctic notothenioids provide us with an ideal opportunity to determine if traits of these fish represent an adaptation to the sub-zero Antarctic environment or whether the traits are related to history and are characteristic of the notothenioid lineage.
