Jennifer Modliszewski

About
I am a graduate student in John Willis' lab in the Department of Biology at Duke University. Before coming to Duke, I obtained my M.S. from the Botany (now Plant Biology) Department at North Carolina State University. I also completed my undergraduate degrees in botany and horticultural science at NC State, and spent some of my time while I was an undergraduate in the lab of Michael Purugganan.

Research Interests
Broadly, I am interested in evolutionary genetics, and currently, I am interested in how polyploidy interacts with the process of evolution. More specifically, I am interested in questions such as:


 * Why is polyploidy more prevalent in some lineages but not others?


 * How do organisms vary in their response to genome doubling, and does this variation reflect an adaptive response?


 * How does polyploidy contribute to the origin of reproductive isolating barriers among polyploid lineages?

Publications
Modliszewski, J. L., D. Thomas, C. Fan, D. Crawford, C.W. dePamphilis and J. Q.-Y. Xiang. 2006. Ancestral chloroplast polymorphism and historical secondary contact in a hybrid zone of Aesculus (Sapindaceae). American Journal of Botany 93(3): 377-388.

Ungerer, Mark C., S. S. Halldorsdottir, J. L. Modliszewski, T. F. C. McKay, and M. D. Purugganan. 2002. Quantitative trait loci for inflorescence development in Arabidopsis thaliana. Genetics 160:1133-1151.

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