Category: Macrostomum
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Seminal fluid – the story continues…
Excited to announce that my proposal to continue investigating seminal fluid function and evolution in Macrostomum flatworms has been approved for funding by the DFG. Watch this space…
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Goodbye and good luck!
Thanks and best wishes to Michael Weber, leaving the lab after six years as a PhD student and postdoc. Michael was instrumental (along with former PhD student Bahar) in developing Macrostomum as a model system for studying seminal fluid-mediated effects, and has more recently been investigating environmental impacts on fertility. Photo: Michael and Bahar hard…
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Primer
EvoDevo are running a series of primers on emerging model systems, featuring everybody’s favourite flatworm as the very first article. Thanks to Eugene Berezikov in Groningen for spearheading this and inviting us all to contribute. Image: Fig. 2 from Wudarski et al. (2020) The free-living flatworm Macrostomum lignano EvoDevo 11:5.
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Seminal fluid – the story so far
So, here it is, the thread you’ve surely all been waiting for…. Everything we've learnt so far about seminal fluid in flatworms (1/20)@baharpatlar@CurrentBiology @CellPressNews@unibielefeld pic.twitter.com/DX5lfFD6iG — Steve Ramm (@steve_ramm) December 13, 2019
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Congratulations Drs Patlar & Weber!
Huge congratulations to Michael on passing his PhD defense last week, and equal (if slightly more belated) congratulations to Bahar who successfully defended at the end of January. A great double-act!
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Another thesis submitted!
Congratulations to Michael on submitting his PhD thesis on the identification and functional characterisation of seminal fluid proteins in Macrostomum! Michael’s and Bahar’s projects were tackling the evolutionary genetics of seminal fluid from complementary perspectives; together they begin to build a fascinating picture of the role seminal fluid plays in flatworm reproduction, and I think…
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Submitted!
An important milestone in the life of the lab today, and a proud moment as Bahar handed in her PhD thesis on the ‘Evolutionary quantitative genetics of seminal fluid’. Already looking forward to the defense early in the new year. Well done Bahar!
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Flatworm seminal fluid
Delighted to report that both Michael and Bahar have now published the first papers from their PhD projects on the functional and evolutionary genetics of seminal fluid in Macrostomum. Michael’s paper sets out to identify candidate transcripts that encode seminal fluid proteins in M. lignano, by performing in situ hybridization experiments to narrow down a…
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Sex allocation under selfing
The number of sperm produced by males usually far exceeds the number of eggs produced by females. The same principle also applies in hermaphrodites, where each individual typically makes many more sperm than eggs. However, if they cannot find a mate, some hermaphrodites have evolved an alternative route by which to reproduce: using their own…
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All by myself
One of the main reasons I began working on Macrostomum flatworms is because they are so plastic, dynamically adjusting investment into reproductive traits according to the prevailing social environment. However, we’ve recently discovered that one species we’re keeping in the lab, Macrostomum pusillum, isn’t really plastic at all. That was initially puzzling, but we now…
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