Li Lab -- Geoffrey Morris

I completed my BSc in Biology at the University of Ottawa in 2002 and started the Ecology & Evolution PhD program in the fall of 2002. Since then I have done an analysis of kinase genes from the malaria parasite Plasmodium (in collaboration with Shinhan Shiu in the Li lab) and an analysis of human polymophism data with Chung-I Wu, another professor in this department.

As an undergraduate I did a number of molecular evolution projects, as well as a couple of projects in related fields. I studied the expression patterns and genomic distribution of progesterone receptor genes Xenopus laevis as a summer student in a signal transduction lab. I studied the evolution of chaperonin 60 and microbial phylogenies when I was a summer student for Ford Doolittle and Andrew Roger at Dalhousie University. I did a summer project on the relationship between worker honeybee's responses to queen pheromone and their ovary development. For my honors research project I studied plant nucleotide substitution rates with Guy Drouin. While I was at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute last summer I studied the molecular evolution of ATP citrate lyase and the origin of its role in alternative carbon fixation pathways in microbes.

My current interests are focusing around the evolution of cellular networks, such as transcriptional regulatory networks and signal tranduction networks. These are some of the questions I'd like to look into:

Where do new transcription factor binding sites come from?
Are signaling networks in higher eukaryotes complex because of selection or are there neutral ratchets?
What determines the tempo of gene expression divergence?
How do constraints on protein-protein interactions govern the evolution of signaling pathways?
Do different motifs in signaling networks (feed-forward, single input, etc) have different life spans?
Does a genes position in a signaling or protein interaction network determine its duplicability?
Does leakiness or plasticity of transcriptional regulation and signal transduction lead to novel functions?

Outside the lab I enjoy jazz piano, photography, the outdoors, and exploring Chicago.