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lab profile
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Armin Moczek Indiana University, Department of Biology
915 East 3rd Street
Bloomington, IN 47405
USA
armin@indiana.edu
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| PI: |
YES |
| Taxa Studied: |
Invertebrate Animals |
| Techniques Employed: |
Degenerate PCR, Quantitative PCR (qPCR), Microarrays, Sanger Sequencing, 454 Pyrosequencing, Bioinformatics/Sequence Analysis, In Situ Hybridization, Antibody Staining, Sectioning for Histology, Other, RNA interference(RNAi), endocrine manipulations, microsurgery |
| Research Description: |
Our lab addresses a fundamental question in biology: how do novel phenotypic traits originate and diversify in nature? We use a wide range of approaches to address this question from different perspectives, and on different levels of biological organization. We use behavioral and ecological approaches in the lab and field on experimental and natural populations to understand when and how ecological processes can drive phenotypic evolution. We employ standard developmental techniques and growth manipulations to address physiological mechanisms of phenotype formation and evolution. Lastly, we rely on an increasing range of developmental-genetic and molecular tools (in-situ hybridization, immunohistochemistry, EST libraries, RNAinterference, microarrays, 2d-Protein-gel electrophoresis) to investigate the genetic and genomic regulation of phenotype expression and diversification. While each of these approaches has provided valuable insights, it has been most of all the integration across these levels of analyses that has proven most informing and fascinating. Our study organisms have been primarily beetles in the genus Onthophagus. We have also begun to address related questions in other organisms, in particular the beetle family Lampyridae (fireflies, lightening bugs) and Drosophila, and are open to add additional organisms to our repertoire. |
| Lab Web Page: |
http://sites.bio.indiana.edu/~moczeklab/ |
| Willing to Host Undergraduates: |
YES |
| Actively Seeking Undergraduates: |
NO |
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