Raul Correa

Department of Botany

430 Lincoln Drive

University of Wisconsin

Madison, WI 53706-1381

Office: 220 Birge Hall
Phone: (608) 265-7929

Fax: (608) 262-7509
Email: rcorrea@wisc.edu

Educational Background:

BA, Biology, Pomona College, 2003

Research Interests:

The genetic basis of plant form evolution

Hobbies:

Socializing, human behavior, traveling, soccer, golf, boxing history, traveling, salsa dancing, sailing, and advocating scientific thinking to all areas of life.

Current Projects:

Evolutionary Transgenomics: A New Screen to Identify Genes that Explain Phenotypic Differences Between Species

An evolutionary transgenomic screen entails the introduction of genomic inserts from a donor species into a recipient species followed by phenotypic screening of the transgenic lines.  Phenotypic effects caused by trangenes can theoretically be due to either gene dosage or evolutionary divergence of the donor and recipient species, all of which are of potential developmental and/or evolutionary interest.  Dosage effects can be identified by seeing if the homologous region of the recipient species’ genome can cause the same effect when introduced as a supernumerary copy.  Evolutionary divergence can be imperfectly divided into two main kinds: phenotypic divergence and developmental system drift.  Phenotypic divergence refers to cases in which a major gene has contributed to the phenotypic divergence of the donor and recipient species, in which case an insert containing this gene could convert the recipient species to resemble the donor species for this phenotype.  In cases where the transformants manifest a phenotype seen in neither species, developmental system drift is implied: divergence in genetic interactions such that genes from one species behave as gain-of-function mutant alleles in the other genetic background.  Among the many interesting phenotypes that can be discovered by such an approach, cases of dominant sterility or lethality have important implications for our understanding of the evolution of reproductive isolation in allopatry.  I am currently performing a proof-of-concept transgenomic screen of Leavenworthia alabamica in an Arabidopsis thaliana background.