克尔斯滕-邦比尔斯 植物进化遗传学家

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Kirsten Bomblies
Plant Evolutionary Geneticist | Class of 2008
Opening avenues into the mysteries of how new species originate through her explorations of incompatible hybrids as a mechanism for speciation in shared ecological niches.

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Title
Plant Evolutionary Geneticist
Affiliation
Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology
Location
Tübingen, Germany
Age
34 at time of award
Area of Focus
Genetics and Molecular Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary/Environmental Biology
Published January 27, 2008
ABOUT KRISTEN'S WORK
Kirsten Bomblies is a young molecular biologist who is shedding light on the mysteries of how new species originate. As a graduate student, she investigated how teosinte, an inedible grass indigenous to Mexico, was domesticated into a commodity crop — corn. Bomblies participated in experiments showing how a single gene, tga1, which controls development of the female inflorescences (ears), can be modified such that the fruitcase is essentially inverted, exposing the edible portion of the fruit. She and her colleagues extended these results by identifying two genes that may control the number of rows of grain. Her more recent series of investigations as a postdoctoral fellow have examined the role of incompatible hybrids as a mechanism for speciation in a shared ecological niche. Using the classical model of plant genetics, the flowering weed Arabidopsis thaliana, Bomblies showed in over 1,000 hybrid crosses that some plants developed a necrotic syndrome similar to the reaction caused by a pathogen. She demonstrated that a family of about 100 genes known as R (resistance) genes, which offer protection against predation, can in particular combinations generate an autoimmune syndrome that prevents a plant hybrid from thriving. Since only certain combinations of R genes are mutually compatible, this observation provides a molecular genetic mechanism for generating reproductively isolated subsets within a previously homogeneous community at a common location. Bomblies is currently expanding these observations further in Arabidopsis and testing their generality in other plant species. Her findings provide a surprising molecular genetic mechanism linking developmental and evolutionary biology, and thus may represent a key advance in both disciplines.

BIOGRAPHY
Kirsten Bomblies received a B.A. (1996) from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. (2004) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is currently a senior postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Molecular Biology at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology. Her scientific articles have appeared in such journals as Nature, Nature Reviews Genetics, and PLoS Biology.



克尔斯滕-邦比尔斯
植物进化遗传学家 | 2008级
她通过探索不相容的杂交种作为共享生态位中的物种形成机制，为研究新物种的起源开辟了一条途径。

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标题
植物进化遗传学家
工作单位
马克斯-普朗克发育生物学研究所分子生物学部
工作地点
德国图宾根
年龄
获奖时34岁
重点领域
遗传学和分子生物学, 生态学和进化/环境生物学
发表于2008年1月27日
关于克尔斯滕的工作
Kirsten Bomblies是一位年轻的分子生物学家，她正在揭示新物种如何起源的奥秘。作为一名研究生，她研究了墨西哥本土的一种不可食用的草--teosinte如何被驯化成一种商品作物--玉米。Bomblies参与的实验表明，控制雌性花序（穗）发育的单一基因tga1可以被修改，从而使果实的外壳基本上是倒置的，露出果实的可食用部分。她和她的同事通过鉴定两个可能控制谷物行数的基因来扩展这些结果。作为博士后，她最近的一系列调查研究了不相容的杂交种作为共享生态位中的一种物种形成机制的作用。使用植物遗传学的经典模型，开花杂草拟南芥，Bomblies在超过1000个杂交品种中显示，一些植物出现了类似于病原体引起的坏死综合症。她证明了一个被称为R（抗性）基因的约100个基因家族，它提供了对捕食的保护，在特定的组合中可以产生一种自身免疫综合症，阻止植物杂交种的茁壮成长。由于只有某些R基因的组合是相互兼容的，这一观察提供了一种分子遗传机制，用于在一个共同的地点，在一个以前同质的群体中产生生殖隔离的子集。Bomblies目前正在拟南芥中进一步扩展这些观察结果，并在其他植物物种中测试其普遍性。她的发现提供了一个令人惊讶的分子遗传机制，将发育生物学和进化生物学联系起来，因此可能代表了这两个学科的一个关键进展。

个人简历
Kirsten Bomblies在宾夕法尼亚大学获得学士学位（1996），在威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校获得博士学位（2004）。她目前是马克斯-普朗克发育生物学研究所分子生物学系的高级博士后研究助理。她的科学文章出现在《自然》、《自然评论遗传学》和《PLoS生物学》等杂志上。