McDaniel Lab at the University of Florida

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McDaniel Lab at the University of Florida

In the McDaniel lab at the University of Florida, we study the evolutionary genetics on the moss, Ceratodon purpureus!

06/01/2016

Congratulations to Sarah Carey! Sarah was awarded a Sigma Xi Grant-in-aid of research (GIAR)! She studies s*xual conflict at the moss placenta and will now be able to fund some of the transcriptomic analyses!

05/30/2016

Roth Conrad, a undergraduate in the McDaniel Lab, received a NSF funded, Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU). During this summer, Roth is helping analyze the Ceratodon purpureus transcriptome and also getting involved with several other projects.

05/23/2016

Our graduate student, Sarah Carey, just returned from Cornell University where she worked in the Scanlon Lab to learn new techniques using Laser Capture Microdissection. Sarah was awarded a microMORPH cross disciplinary training grant in order to fund her trip. Her work in the Scanlon Lab has taught her new techniques which will be pivotal in her dissertation as she studies genetic conflict in the moss placenta.

05/11/2016

One of the McDaniel lab's hard working undergraduate volunteers has been accepted in to the University of Florida's Medical Honors Program! This program will allow for Marna to attend medical school here at UF. Keep up the hard work Marna

05/09/2016

This past weekend the McDaniel lab attended the 2016 Plant Molecular and Cell Biology (PMCB) workshop in Daytona Beach, FL. Graduate student Sarah Carey presented her work investigating the differences in gene expression in male and female Ceratodon purpureus. Graduate student Leslie Kollar presented her work on s*x specific differences in the metabolome of Ceratodon purpureus and was awarded runner up for best talk!

04/27/2016

Congratulations to Brandon Corder for receiving the SSE/BEACON Undergraduate Diversity at Evolution travel award! Brandon is a junior microbiology major and has been volunteering in the McDaniel Lab for one year! His hard work and dedication to studying evolutionary genetics has paid off and he will be attending the 2016 Evolution meeting in Austin, TX. He will present a poster on the benefits of using Ceratodon purpureus (moss) for undergraduate research. As part of the program, Brandon will also be mentored by another graduate student. If you are at the 2016 Evolution meeting be sure to stop by and see Brandon's poster!

04/04/2016

What do moss and mammals have in common? A placenta! Our graduate student, Sarah Carey, studies genetic conflict in the moss placenta. Sarah has received funding from the SSE Rosemary Grant and the microMORPH Cross Disciplinary Training Grant to visit the Scanlon lab at Cornell University. Check out her research below!

"I am interested in the role of parent-offspring conflict in maintaining genetic variation for fitness within populations and its contribution to the evolution of differentiation among populations.
My dissertation is focused on how having separate s*xes maintains genetic variation for fitness. Mosses are an excellent model system for the study of parent-offspring conflict because the diploid offspring (i.e. sporophyte) is nutritionally dependent on the haploid, maternal gametophyte for its entire life. In species that are dioecious (i.e. have separate s*xes) theory suggests that the maternal genotype should limit the amount of nutrients allocated to any one offspring event while the paternal genotype is expected to promote an increase in nutrient transfer. I therefore hypothesize the site of nutrient transfer from the maternal gametophyte to the offspring sporophyte – that is, the placenta – will be enriched for transcripts with s*x-biased expression. To test this hypothesis, I aim to use Laser Capture Microdissection combined with RNAseq of placental cells at multiple stages of development in the moss model system Ceratodon purpureus. In the long term I expect to find placenta-expressed transcripts that contribute to the abundant variation in spore production in natural populations of this species."

03/29/2016

Two of our graduate students, Sarah Carey and Leslie Kollar received honorable mention for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)! Congratulations to Sarah and Leslie !!!!

03/28/2016

Three of our undergraduate researchers (Anna Swygert, Brandon Corder, and Marna List) are working on collecting data from 32 half sibling families of moss from a focal population.These data will be incorporated in graduate student, Leslie Kollar's, research looking at additive genetic variance-covariance in volatile production in moss! Happy !

03/24/2016

Roth Conrad and Noah Dewitt are part of the University Scholars Program and presented the research that they have been working on in the McDaniel lab at the 17th Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium, hosted by the University of Florida's Center for Undergraduate Research. Both students have been using genetic transformations of the moss Physcomitrella patens to characterize maize development. Their research required collaboration between Stuart F. McDaniel (Department of Biology) and A. Mark Settles (Department of Horticulture Sciences).

03/21/2016

The McDaniel lab has a team of 10 outstanding undergraduates! These students are currently volunteering in the lab on three major projects. Their work involves very tedious techniques such as counting hundreds of tiny spores, DNA extractions for genotyping laboratory strains, setting up large growth experiments, and exploring transcriptomics. We wouldnt be able to get so much amazing reserach done without the help of our excellent undergraduates! Check out the McDaniel Lab page on for more details on the fascinating projects that our undergraduates are the driving force behind.

03/14/2016

For Barry's masters thesis he looked at a common nitrogen-fixing lichen Leptogium cyanescens to look at fungal/cyanobacterial genotype associations. He collected specimens that were identified using morphology as L. cyanescens from 8 localities in Florida and amplified fungal and cyanobacterial markers. He found that there were 4 fungal clades. Three of the fungal clades associate with multiple lineages of cyanobacteria. One fungal clade only associated with one cyanobacterial lineage, which is rare for lichenized fungi.

Address

Gainesville, FL
32611

Telephone

+13523923261

Website

http://mcdaniellab.biology.ufl.edu/

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