The Sherlock Lab - Experimental Evolution in Microbial Systems
The Sherlock lab uses experimental approaches to understand the
evolutionary process, specifically interested in i) what's the rate of
beneficial mutation, ii) what is the distribution of fitness effects of
beneficial mutations, iii) what are the identities of beneficial mutations
(and are they gain or loss of function, are they recessive, dominant or
overdominant, are the genic or regulatory?) and iv) how do each of these
change as a function of genotype, ploidy and environment. We are also
interested in how mutations that are beneficial in one environment fare in
others, to explore the trade-offs that inevitably occur when fitness
increases in a specific environment, and we are interested in exploring at
what level experimental evolution can be deterministic, and at what level
it is stochastic. We typically use short-term continuous (chemostat) and
serial batch culture experiments in conjunction with lineage tracking and
high throughput sequencing to understand the adaptive changes that occur
in yeast in response to selective pressures as they evolve in
vitro.
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Selected Recent Publications
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Levy, S.F., Blundell, J.R., Venkataram, S., Petrov, D.A., Fisher,
D.S. and Sherlock, G. (2015). Quantitative evolutionary dynamics
using high-resolution lineage tracking. Nature 519, 181-186.
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Kvitek, D.J., Sherlock, G. (2013). Whole Genome, Whole Population
Sequencing Reveals That Loss of Signaling Networks Is the Major Adaptive
Strategy in a Constant Environment. PLoS Genetics 9(11):
e1003972.
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Dunn, B., Paulish, T., Stanbery, A., Piotrowski, J., Koniges, G.,
Kroll, E., Louis, E.J., Liti, G., Sherlock, G., and Rosenzweig,
F. (2013). Recurrent Rearrangement during Adaptive Evolution in an
Interspecific Yeast Hybrid Suggests a Model for Rapid Introgression.
PLoS Genetics 9(3): e1003366.
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Wenger, J.W., Piotrowski, J., Nagarajan, S., Chiotti, K., Sherlock,
G. and Rosenzweig, F. (2011). Hunger Artists: Yeast Adapted to Carbon
Limitation Show Trade-Offs under Carbon Sufficiency. PLoS
Genetics 7(8): e1002202.
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Kvitek, D.J. and Sherlock, G. (2011). Reciprocal Sign Epistasis
between Frequently Experimentally Evolved Adaptive Mutations Causes a
Rugged Fitness Landscape. PLoS Genetics 7(4): e1002056.
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