Pennell Lab
Principal Investigator: Matthew Wesley Pennell
Institution: Cornell University (Ithaca, NY)
Primary Subfield: Genetics/Genomics
Recruitment Status: ✅ Hiring Postdocs
Research Focus
SUMMARY Across the biomedical sciences there has been an increased recognition that many key questions in these fields require phylogenetic thinking and approaches. My group has a very strong track record of making fundamental methodological contributions that have changed how biologists think about and analyze phylogenetically structured data and of finding new applications for these methods. My group’s current research is focused on two main themes, both related to the evolution of genomic function. First, we will use phylogenetic comparative approaches to investigate the dynamics of gene expression evolution across species. We will first assess the appropriateness of adopting phylogenetic models of phenotypic evolution for describing changes in gene expression using an approach we have previously developed. This will enable us to assess the robustness of findings regarding the relative importance of different evolutionary processes in generating interspecific diversity and help us develop the next-generation of models, specifically tailored to functional genomic data. We will then build a mechanistic model that will allow us and other researchers to test for associations between…
Active NIH Awards
- 5R35GM151348-05: Leveraging phylogenetic approaches to investigate the evolution of geneexpression (2026)
- 5R35GM151348-04: Leveraging phylogenetic approaches to investigate the evolution of geneexpression (2025)
- 7R35GM151348-03: Leveraging phylogenetic approaches to investigate the evolution of geneexpression (2024)
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