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  • Malaria parasites

    Malaria parasites (and their kin) can be viewed as minimal eukaryotes, harboring a nucleus (yellow), a secretory pathway the Golgi (purple) and specialized ‘rhotpry’ organelle (black), and two endosymbiotic organelles, the mitochondrion (red) and apicoplast (green).

  • Escherichia coli

    Escherichia coli cells with fluorescently labeled chromosomal loci. 

  • Courtship in Drosophila

    Various courtship songs produced by Drosophila species

  • Field Work

    Many genes that organisms use to regulate their mutualists are also used to defend against parasites and pathogens. The shared genetic control of beneficial and harmful symbioses raises the intriguing possibility that susceptibility to infection is a pleiotropic cost of mutualism. Our goal is to understand how a genetic tradeoff between attracting mutualists and repelling parasites has shaped the genomic architecture of traits mediating species interactions, and how ongoing conflict influences adaptation. 

  • Telomeres

    Giant ‘polytene’ chromosomes (white) from a fruit fly with a fluorescent probe (red) that hybridizes to a telomere-restricted DNA repeat.

Biology is fundamental to our changing world. The 21st century challenge for our students, our scholars, and the greater society is to understand our place in this changing world and to create fundamental knowledge for informed policies, economies, and social structure.

Upcoming Events



Contractile cytoskeletal networks: the guiding role of friction

Dr. Mariya Savinov, New York University
- | DRL 2C8 and via Zoom

Abstract: Many essential cellular processes depend on subcellular structures capable of generating active forces. In particular, actomyosin networks and their contraction are central for cell…



Biotic and abiotic drivers of pathogen virulence evolution

Dr. Kayla King, University of British Columbia
- | Via Zoom only.

King Lab Website

Twitter/X: @kaylacking


Seminar with Alexander Petroff

Dr. Alexander Petroff, Clark University
- | Zoom