Yaniv Brandvain

Brief biographical sketch
Born in Jerusalem and raised in metro Detroit, I received my BA from the College of the Atlantic in 2004. While there, I worked with Kevin Flurkey in David Harrison's group at the Jackson Lab, beginning my life as a research scientist. I finished my PhDwith Mike Wade (IU page, OWW page) and Leonie Moyle in the department of biology at Indiana University. If all goes according to plan, I will graduate in the summer of 2010, and have joined the center for population biology at UC Davis as a postdoc working with Graham Coop and others!! Here is a current version of my [[Media:BrandvainCV.pdf|Curriculum Vitae]] which shows what I've been up to.

Research interests
I am broadly interested in evolution and genetics, as well as development and ecology, and I do not believe that these fields are very distinct from one another. I usually gravitate towards problems involving interactions among individuals, genes, levels of selection, or interactions between genes and the environment. Below, I briefly discuss two topics that I think about often - Genomic imprinting & Coevolution.

Genomic imprinting
Sometimes a gene's expression depends on whether it was inherited maternally or paternally. This phenomenon, known as genomic imprinting, has interested me since my undergraduate research. Why should genes be imprinted? The conflict (or kinship) theory argues that conflicts between mom and dad over resource allocation drive the evolution of genomic imprinting. I have worked a bit on this theory and its implications, but I am also interested in a number of other possible explanations. In addition to theoretical interests, I am conducting a few controlled crosses to identify imprinted regions of the tomato genome. I think this would be quite exciting, as we only know of a few imprinted genes from a small sample of plant species.

Coevolution
Most, if not all, of the organisms on earth earth exist as complex multi-taxa communities. Some associations, like that of the mitochondria and the nucleus or Buchnera and aphids are quite intimate, while others are more diffuse. I am interested in how relationships between species evolve.

One specific question that I've been looking into is how the inheritance of a symbiont influence the co-evolutionary trajectory of host-symbiont pairs. Looking broadly across the angiosperms, I found that the degree of co-inheritance of mitochondrial and nuclear genomes can predict the number of mitochondrial genes transferred to the nucleus.

Other interests
I play both racquetball and squash regularly and basketball less often. I like to drink bourbon and beer and eat most things. I enjoy much music, but old-timey music is the only thing that gets me dancing. In addition to various Detroit sports, I enjoy watching Chuck, Dexter, and 24. Most of my readings are technical things about ecology, evolution and genetics, but I do also enjoy reading popular science and the history of science.

Publications

 * 1) InPrep Brandvain Y, Goodnight CJ and Wade MJ. The inter-genomic covariance of host and pathogen genes: the contributions of vertical and horizontal transmission.
 * 2) UnderReview Brandvain Y. Matrisibs, patrisibs, and the evolution of genomic imprinting on autosomes and sex-chromosomes.
 * 3) Genetics09 pmid=19448273
 * 4) Evolution09 pmid=19154382
 * 5) JGeron07 pmid=18000137
 * 6) BMCEvolBio07 pmid=17961250
 * 7) Science07 pmid=17379800
 * 8) AmNat05 pmid=16224688
 * 9) Mdibl04 Salinas S, Brandvain Y, Anderson R, Martin J, Preston RL, Kidder III GW and Petersen CW. Reproductive ecology of Fundulus heteroclitus and Fundulus diaphanus in a New England watershed. The Bulletin of the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory 2004. 43: 115-117. Link

Reading Groups
Evolutionary Genetics Discussion Group

Friends, mentors and collaborators

 * Mike Wade
 * Leonie Moyle
 * Graham Coop
 * David Haig
 * Mike Barker
 * Matt Dunn
 * Jonathan Pruitt

Journals and podcasts

 * Journals Evolution, American Naturalist, Genetics, PLoS Biology, PLoS Genetics, Science, Nature, Journal of Evolutionary Biology, Journal of Theoretical Biology, Heredity, Molecular Biology and Evolution, PNAS, NRG, TREE, TIG
 * Podcasts The Moth, Radiolab, This American Life, Car Talk

Various forms of help

 * Introductory tutorial
 * OpenWetWare help pages

Contact

 * Yaniv Brandvain, Indiana University, Department of Biology. 1001 E 3rd St. Bloomington, IN 47405.
 * Email me through OpenWetWare or at ybrandvain via google mail.