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 interactions with the process of evolution. More specifically, I am interested in questions such as, does polyploidy contribute significantly to species diversity? 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?
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.
