Monthly Training Grant Breakfasts
Selected Wednesdays at 9:00 AM (unless otherwise noted)
January 14, 2026
Speaker: Thea Gessler, Interdepartmental Genetics and Genomics, Iowa State University
Topic: "The evolution of gene regulation underlying sex determination in turtles"
Sexual reproduction gave rise to the evolution of distinct mating types. In many lineages mating types display anisogamy, where two distinct gamete fitness strategies are employed. A need to ensure consistent developmental commitment to the optimal gamete strategy favored the evolution of gonadal sex determination, which is the commitment to testicular or ovarian developmental fate due to genetic and/or environmental factors. Vertebrates are notably diverse in the mechanisms they use to determine sex, with multiple transitions in sex determining mechanisms present. Despite this diversity, many genes are reused during sexual development across this group. Thus, we can use vertebrate systems to investigate 1) the role genetic rewiring plays in generating sex determination diversity and 2) how environmental signals such as temperature can be sensed and relayed in environmental sex determination systems and ignored when genotypic sex determination (GSD) evolves. Turtles are one group of vertebrates with multiple evolutionary transitions in sex determination mechanisms. Here using a comparative framework of two turtles – one which has retained temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD) since the common ancestor and another which has derived a sex chromosome based GSD system – we can contrast distinct mechanisms of sex determination and ask what changes when GSD evolves from TSD? Using developmental transcriptomics and network modeling we identified a 1) surprising retention of temperature sensitivity, 2) genome-wide shifts in gene regulatory patterns between lineages, and 3) a set of transcription factors which may play an important role regulating changes between species, possibly mediated through a key organelle – the primary cilium.
During the final portion of the talk, I will give a brief overview of my proposed research for the CTRD fellowship leveraging natural intersexuality in frogs to investigate its broader developmental and organizational consequences on organismal biology.
February 11, 2026
Speaker: James Gibb, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Topic: "Adiposity mediates the association between adverse childhood experiences and systemic inflammation in a cohort of young sexual minority men"
Dr. Gibb is a biological anthropologist specializing in human population biology. His research investigates how lived experiences, particularly among sexual and gender minority populations, are biologically embedded over the life course through mechanisms such as stress, inflammation, and epigenetics. By integrating fieldwork, laboratory, and computational approaches, his work explores how social and environmental contexts shape variation in health, aging, and survival across diverse populations.
March 11, 2026
Trainee Data Blitz, Swapping Roles. What better way to learn to communicate across our common themes than to present research that’s not your own? Come learn about our trainees’ (Taylor Drazen, Josie Fornara, Dustin Rousselle, Ellie Shell, ) research in this unique flash-talk format.
April 8, 2026
Speaker: Jason Tennesson, Associate Professor of Biology
Topic: TBD