Hood, Leroy

The challenges of biology are focused around three central features of life: evolution, development, and physiology. These features operate across very different time dimensions: roughly millions of years, the lifetime of the organism, and seconds to weeks, respectively. Our laboratory is focused on a series of deep biological questions relating to these features.

* How do gene families evolve?

* How do gene regulatory networks change in evolutionary terms and operate across the developmental and physiological time dimensions to control biomodules? Biomodules are groups of proteins that execute a particular function (e.g., cell cycle or sugar utilization).

* How do innate and adaptive immune systems develop and function?