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titleboxERIC S. HAAG titlebox

professor pictureAssistant Professor

email:ehaag@umd.edu
phone:
301.405.8534 (office)
301.405.8625 (lab)
fax:301.314.9358
office:0256 Bio-Psych
graduate programs: Biology, BEES, MOCB
bullet visit lab page   bullet most recent publications


RESEARCH INTERESTS

My laboratory studies the developmental genetics of evolutionary change in animals. Of particular interest to me are reproductive adaptations whose evolution required major developmental novelties. Currently the lab is focused on the evolution of self-fertile hermaphroditism in nematodes. We use the model nematode Caenorhabditis elegans as a starting point, which confers several advantages. First, sister species of C. elegans have different reproductive modes that are based on differences in sex determination in a single tissue--the germ line. Second, C. elegans sex determination has been subjected to intense genetic, molecular, and biochemical investigation, which provides a wealth of potential mechanisms for investigation. Third, many of the tools available to C. elegans researchers are applicable to its relatives as well, such as classical genetics, RNA interference-mediated reverse genetics, and even complete genome sequence.

We seek to identify the molecular and genetic mechanisms that distinguish the sex determination of androdioecious (hermaphrodite/male) species from that of gonochoristic (male/female) species of worms. We also are interested in the convergent evolution of selfing, the evolutionary forces that drive the rapid evolution of sex determination even in the absence of overt phenotypic change, and the molecular and genomic responses to these forces.

Recent Publications


Haag, E.S. and Doty, A.V. (2005). Sex determination across evolution: connecting the dots ("Primer"). PLoS Biology 3: e21-24. PDF

Haag, E.S. and Ackerman, A.D. (2005) Intraspecific variation in fem-3 and tra-2, two rapidly coevolving nematode sex-determining genes. Gene 349: 35-42. PDF

Haag, E.S. and Molla, M.N. (2005) Compensatory evolution of interacting gene products through multifunctional intermediates. Evolution 59: 1620-32 PDF Dowload Synth_Pop code

Haag, E.S. (2005). The evolution of nematode sex determination: C. elegans as a reference point for comparative biology. In Wormbook: Online review of C. elegans biology, ed. The C. elegans Research Community. PDF

Haag, E.S. and Pilgrim, D. (2005). Harnessing Caenorhabditis genomics for evolutionary developmental biology. Curr. Genomics 6: 579-88.

Hill, R.C., Carvalho, C., Salogiannis, J., Schlager, B., Pilgrim, D., and Haag, E.S. (2006). Genetic flexibility in the convergent evolution of hermaphroditism in Caenorhabditis nematodes. Dev. Cell 10: 531-38 PDF Suppl. Mats.

Haag, E.S. (2007) Compensatory vs. pseudocompensatory evolution in molecular and developmental interactions. Genetica 129: 45-55. PDF

Haag, E.S., Chamberlin, H., Coghlan, A., Fitch, D.H.A., Peters, A.D., and Schulenburg, H. (2007) Caenorhabditis evolution: if they all look alike, you aren't looking hard enough. Trends Genet. 23: 101-04. PDF

Kelleher, D.F., de Carvalho, C.E., Doty AV, Layton M, Cheng AT, Mathies LD, Pilgrim D, Haag ES (2008) Comparative Genetics of Sex Determination: Masculinizing Mutations in Caenorhabditis briggsae. Genetics 178: 1415-29. PDF
Suppl. Mats.