Macroalgal past, present, and future: A place for developmental biology

Brown macroalgae have been present on our Pacific Northeast coast for at least 35 million years. The largest extant brown macroalgae form the canopy and sub-canopy of our incredible kelp forests, serving as foundational species for near-shore marine ecosystems. These organisms have an essential role in a thriving and sustainable ocean future. As a developmental biologist, I seek to understand how organisms grow the shapes and patterns of their bodies, how these bodies evolved, and how understanding them more deeply on a molecular level might be utilized for a sustainable future. In this seminar, I will discuss our current work around one particular developmental process: branching patterns in brown algae. I will highlight several ongoing collaborative projects, including those on fossils (past), phylogenies & trait mapping (present), and advancing molecular tools and understanding (future). Join me in discovering what body plans are evident in the brown algal fossil record, in describing beautiful branching morphologies & mapping them onto a modern phylogeny, and in building the tools & datasets necessary to understand (perhaps even change) how their genes lead to such body plans.

Speaker: Siobhan Braybrook, UC Los Angeles