Associate Professor Andrew Brown's laboratory investigates the complex repetoire of signals that help to balance cholesterol levels in our cells.
Coevolution of Hosts and their Symbionts
When two species interact extensively, each exerts strong selection on the other. When one evolves a new feature or modifies an old one, the other typically evolves new adaptations in response. As the Red Queen told Alice in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, "Here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place".
The work with Drosophila and Wolbachia has the potential to be a definitive test of a general model of host-symbiont dynamics. This diversity of interactions combined with experimental tractability provides a unique opportunity to model this dynamic and intriguing system.
BABS personnel that are responsible for this project