Laura Wegener Parfrey

Picture of Laura Wegener Parfrey
OEB Ph.D. Candidate
B.S., SUNY University at Albany, 2004
lwegener (at) cns.umass.edu

Research Interests

eukaryotes

My research focuses on understanding the diversity of eukaryotes--cells with nuclei--and their genomes. The bulk of eukaryotic diversity is microbial. There are roughly 70 lineages of eukaryotes, three of which are the plants, animals, and fungi and their microbial relatives. Molecular data has placed nearly all of these lineages within a small number of high-level groups over the past decade. A review of published literature demonstrated strong support for some supergroups but not others (Parfrey et al. 2006). In conjunction with collaborators in the Eutree project, I am using multigene molecular analyses that emphasize broad taxonomic sampling to resolve eukaryotic relationships (Parfrey et al. 2010).

Eukaryotic life cycles The defining feature of eukaryotic cells is the nucleus and the genome contained within. Emerging data challenge the old perspective that eukaryotic genomes are largely static within species. Instead, genomes appear far more dynamic and variable that previously thought. Genome content and organization are increasingly recognized to vary among individuals within a species and within an individual during the life cycle (Parfrey et al. 2008).

Allogromia I study genome dynamics within Foraminifera. Foraminifera are a diverse lineage of marine amoebae that have a fossil record dating back to the Cambian. Their life cycle is an alternation of generations similar to plants, but also includes polyploidy and an unusual DNA elimination process called Zerfall. Zerfall occurs just prior to the production of gametes: DNA and other nuclear material condense into granules and these are subsequently degraded. The degredation of DNA suggests that must have been previously amplifed during the forams' life cycle. In my dissertation I am determining the identity of the DNA eliminated during Zerfall, and elucidating the extent of genomic variation within one species, Allogromia laticollaris (Parfrey and Katz 2010).

Selected Publications

Parfrey LW and Katz LA. 2010. Genome dynamics are influenced by food source in Allogromia laticollaris strain CSH (Foraminifera). Genome Biology and Evolution 2:678-685. Full-text

Parfrey LW and Katz LA. 2010. Dynamic genomes of eukaryotes and the maintenance of genomic integrity. Microbe Magazine 5(4): 156-163. Full-text

Parfrey LW, Grant J, Tekle YI, Lasek-Nesselquist E, Morrison H, Sogin ML, Patterson DJ and Katz LA. 2010. Broadly sampled multigene analyses yield a well-resolved eukaryotic tree of life. Systematic Biology. Full-text

Parfrey LW, Lahr DJG, Katz LA. 2008. The dynamic nature of eukaryotic genomes. Molecular Biology and Evolution 25(4): 787-794. Full-text

Parfrey LW, Barbero E, Lasser E, Dunthorn MS, Patterson DJ, Bhattacharya D, Katz LA. 2006. Evaluating support for the current classification of eukaryotic diversity. PLoS Genetics 2: 2062-2073. Full-text