Entries by Brook Moyers

Is Genetic Evolution Predictable?

How often does evolution repeat itself? When the same evolutionary strategy arises multiple times, how often are these strategies built on the same genetic foundations? Addressing this question allows us to understand the relative roles of constraint and contingency in the history of life, but (without a time machine) identifying independent and parallel evolutionary strategies […]

Symphony of the regulators: How do plants control complex responses to environmental signals?

There are several models we use to conceptualize how plants respond to environmental signals through transcriptional regulation. In perhaps the best-understood model, the perception of some environmental signal flows through one or several mechanisms to a master regulator, often a transcription factor (TF). This master regulator acts as an on-off switch to trigger downstream gene […]