|
|
lab profile
 |
Casper J. Breuker Oxford Brookes University
Gipsy Lane
Headington
Oxford, Oxfordshire OX3 0BP
United Kingdom
cbreuker@brookes.ac.uk
4.41865E+11
|
| PI: |
YES |
| Taxa Studied: |
Invertebrate Animals |
| Techniques Employed: |
Quantitative PCR (qPCR), Solexa (Illumina) Sequencing, Bioinformatics/Sequence Analysis, SNP Mapping, In Situ Hybridization, Antibody Staining, Confocal Microscopy |
| Research Description: |
Casper J. Breuker works on the Speckled wood butterfly, Pararge aegeria, as a model organism and investigates in reproductive success under a range of environmental conditions. In order to understand reproductive variation he investigates the developmental genetic regulation of oogenesis and quantifies variation in key regulatory genes among populations. Furthermore, he studies the evolution of those regulatory mechanisms that appear unique to butterflies. Such studies are crucial in elucidating, for example, life-history trade-offs, maternal regulation of embryogenesis, and oocyte pathology. The group was the first to report a butterfly ovarian butterfly transcriptome (including the identification of all the maternal transcripts present in mature oocytes), and identify the unique regulatory aspects of butterfly oogenesis. They described the spatio-temporal maternal gene expression patterns in butterfly ovaries and embryos and characterised in detail the genes implicated in hormonal control of oogenesis and transgenerational hormonal effects in butterflies. |
| Lab Web Page: |
http://bms.brookes.ac.uk/research/groups/evolutionarydevelopmentalbiology/evolutionarydev |
| Willing to Host Undergraduates: |
YES |
| Actively Seeking Undergraduates: |
YES |
|
|
