Vaishali Katju

Short presentation

We combine experimental evolution in C. elegans with high-throughput genomic and classical genetic approaches to study fundamental questions in evolutionary biology pertaining to the nature of spontaneous mutations and the evolution of new genes by duplication.

Laboratory website: https://www.katju-evolutionlab.net/

You can learn more about our research at Google Scholar, Research Gate and Twitter.

Keywords

• experimental evolution
• spontaneous mutation
• gene duplication
• mitochondrial evolution
• genomic conflict
• caenorhabditis elegans

Biography

• 2022-present Professor, Programme in Evolutionary Biology, Department of Ecology and Genetics, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
• 2019-2022 Professor, Department of Veterinary Integrative Biosciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, U.S.A.
• 2015-2019 Associate Professor, Department of Veterinary Integrative Biosciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, U.S.A.
• 2013-2015 Associate Professor, Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, U.S.A.
• 2007-2013 Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, U.S.A.
• 2005-2007 National Science Foundation (NSF) Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Biological Informatics, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, U.S.A.
• 2004 Ph.D. in Evolutionary Genetics, Department of Biology, Indiana University-Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, U.S.A.
• 1993 B.S. in Biological Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, U.S.A.

Research

Our research combines the power of experimental evolution using Caenorhabditis elegans with high-throughput genomics to address fundamental questions in biology and evolution regards the rates, fitness effects, and dynamics of spontaneous mutations. We are additionally investigating the joint roles of selection and drift in the origin of reproductive incompatibilities, genomic conflict and compensatory evolution, and the genetic basis of adaptation following fitness decline and recovery.