MBL Friday Evening Lecture Series: “The Molecular Anatomy of Animal Body Plans” – Chris Lowe, Hopkins Marine Station, Standford University

Our understanding of major events in animal evolution have largely been based on comparative anatomy of both living and fossil taxa. The large morphological disparity between living taxa, and an often-imperfect fossil record, have made reconstructing early events in origins of animal phyla challenging. A growing body of work from developmental biology reveals that bilateral animals share a very conserved set of gene regulatory networks that define the major organizational axes during early development: the genes in these networks are expressed in very similar spatial and temporal patterns across animals with fundamental differences in their body plan organization. This “molecular anatomy” is more conserved than the anatomies that it regulates and provides a novel set of data to test outstanding zoological puzzles. Lowe will discuss his lab’s work in hemichordates and echinoderms and how this has helped to give insights into early brain evolution and a broader perspective on animal body plan evolution.

Chris Lowe moved to the USA from the UK following a BSc in Biology from the University of Sussex. He received his Ph.D. from SUNY Stony Brook in Ecology and Evolution on echinoderm evolution and development in Greg Wray’s lab. He moved to University of California Berkeley as a Miller Fellow and worked in Mike Levine’s lab then with John Gerhart to develop hemichordates as a new developmental model species, which is when he first started working at the MBL. His first independent academic position was at the University of Chicago in the Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy. He then moved to Stanford University based at Hopkins Marine Station where his lab works on body plan evolution.