IGERT Symposium Highlights Future Directions for Evo-Devo
The University of Oregon recently hosted the fifth annual IGERT Symposium on Evolution, Development and Genomics, "From Pattern to Process:
Bridging Micro- and Macroevolutionary Concepts through Evo-Devo." The symposium drew more than 100 participants from around the world for more than a dozen scientific presentations, fostered extensive interactions between students and leading scientists, and highlighted future directions for Evo-Devo.
The weekend symposium started with co-keynote addresses by Jerry Coyne (University of Chicago) and Greg Wray (Duke University), who debated the relative importance of cis-regulatory vs. coding mutations in the evolutionary process. In the end, the speakers largely agreed that both types of mutations are likely to be important, and future work should address other questions, such as whether and how the evolutionary processes that fix the two classes of mutations differ.
Other speakers addressed a range of topics, from the evolution of homeobox genes to sponge genomics, evolution of metabolic networks, and the genetic basis for adaptive change in wild populations. The talks were summarized on PZ Meyers' blog, Pharyngula (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/). See the symposium website (evodevo.uoregon.edu/symposium.html) for more information.
Above: Greg Wray (his t-shirt reads, "Exon Schmexon") and Jerry Coyne ("I'm no CIS-sy") are still friends after an evening discussing the recent focus in Evo-Devo on regulatory mutations as the cause of most major evolutionary change.