Welcome to the Fish Evo Devo Geno Lab!

Our research focuses on genomic and morphological change in vertebrates over long macro-evolutionary timescales. We utilize diverse groups of fishes such as gar, bowfin, zebrafish, medaka, and killifishes as model systems to answer fundamental questions about the developmental and genomic basis of major transitions during vertebrate animal evolution, including our own human lineage.

Our integrative research program combines comparative genomics with experimental developmental studies of gene functions to answer questions that have long interested evolutionary biologists:

(1) How does biodiversity arise from diversification of genome content by gen(om)e duplication and gene loss?

(2) How do changes in gene regulation contribute to evolutionary novelties and key innovations?

(3) How can evolutionary genetic principles be applied to improve the understanding of human disease?

Lab News

Latest Publications

Thompson et al. (2022) Genome of the Rio Pearlfish (Nematolebias whitei), a bi-annual killifish model for Eco-Evo-Devo in extreme environments
G3 Genes|Genomes|Genetics
Red the MSU Today story here.
Thompson et al. (2021) The bowfin genome of the bowfin (Amia calva) illuminates the developmental evolution of ray-finned fishes.
Nature Genetics

Read more about the story in MSU Today.

See Bowfin also in the OneZoom Tree of Life Explorer.

2022

February 2022

The Rio Pearlfish genome article is published in G3 Genes|Genomes|Genetics!
See Ingo's talk on the Bowfin Genome project from the Genomes of Animals & Plants Virtual Conference.

January 2022

We have a new Zebrafish Facility Manager: Gia! Thanks to Taylor for all the good work keeping our facility afloat during the pandemic!
Three new undergraduate researchers are joining the team: Daniel, Chloe, and Keyana.

2021

October 2021

Our lab manager retires. Thanks for everything, Camilla - we will miss you!

August 2021

Three new PhD students join the lab - our international lab is growing!
Welcome Jamily, Brooke, and Hao!
Check out Cameron's interview with The Sci-Files on zebrafish neural crest Evo-Devo:

July 2021

Thanks to NSF IOS for supplemental funding to support post-baccalaureate student Rachel Alcorn over the next year to work on garnomics!

June 2021

Cameron leaves for graduate school at University of Colorado Anschutz. So long, and thanks for all the fish!

May 2021

Undergraduate Research Assistants Cameron and Rachel graduate - congrats to your achievement awards! We're glad you stay on to push our science forward!

April 2021

Gar Skull

In a new study in collaboration with the group of Tetsuya Nakamura published in Developmental Dynamics, we explore the development of the gar skull.

Gar Eyes

In a new study led by colleagues  Alain Chédotal  and Filippo Del Bene published in Science, we show that gar and other non-teleost fish have bilateral visual connections from eye to brain, revising the evolutionary history of 3D vision.

Read about it here in MSU Today.

2020

December 2020

Our chromosome-level genome assembly plus NCBI RefSeq gene annotations for the Rio Pearlfish (Nematolebias whitei) are now publicly available.

See also our Killi-Kits, a STEM outreach tool that uses Pearlfish and other killifishes.

November 2020

We received a $1.6 Mio. NSF IOS EDGE grant together with our collaborators Allyse Ferrara and Solomon David from Nicholls State University! More info here via MSU Today and NSF IOS.   

October 2020

  • The lab submitted five abstracts for #SICB2021 - see you online in January!
  • Our new website is online. Hello World!