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Heather Maughan--Research Interests
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I am interested in the evolutionary forces and functional steps responsible for the origin of, maintenance of, and variability in "complex" bacterial phenotypes. My graduate work focused on the loss of the ability of Bacillus subtilis to develop into spores from vegetative cells in experimental populations which I had evolved in the laboratory for 6,000 generations (see Publications in CV page).
My post-doctoral work in the Redfield lab is addressing the functional variation and evolutionary maintenance of competence. I am testing many clinical (i.e., natural) isolates of Haemophilus influenzae for their ability to take up DNA and recombine it into the chromosome. I will also be analyzing the genome sequences from many of these isolates in an attempt to associate mutations with variation in transformability. This population genetic approach will be useful for understanding the evolutionary forces that maintain competence ability in natural populations of H. influenzae.
My blog also has frequent updates concerning my research.
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