PGRP Seminar – Gaurav Moghe: Breaking the Tower of Babel: The evolution of complexity and diversity in plant metabolism

11am to Noon, Cornell Vet School Auditorium (Lecture Hall 1)

Metabolic pathways in plants are quite dynamic, resulting in production of over a million metabolites across ~300,000 estimated plant species. These metabolic pathways are in a constant state of innovation due to gene duplication, transcriptional divergence, enzyme promiscuity etc. How have specific metabolic pathways originated and diversified? What is the role of positive selection and genetic drift in shaping metabolic diversity? How does enzyme promiscuity influence evolution of specialized metabolic pathways? We are investigating these and other allied questions using evolutionary genomic approaches, by performing comparative analyses of plant genomes, transcriptomes and proteomes. Research in the Moghe Lab is highly integrative and comprised of both computational and wet-lab approaches.

This seminar is hosted as part of BTI’s Plant Genome Research Program, taking place every Wednesday (except July 4th) from June 6th – August 1st, 2018.