The study of tissue-specific regulatory networks in Cichlid fish

The lineages of cichlid species from the Great East African Lakes, with their extreme phenotypic and behavioural variation, even amongst closely related species, provide an excellent system to examine the genome-phenome relationship and identify the molecular mechanisms that result in between and within-species divergence.

In this project the student will use comparative functional genomics (gene expression levels, methylation patterns, etc.) to study the evolution of tissue specific genetic regulatory networks in cichlid fish. The work will encompass a complete spectrum, from bioinformatics analyses through to experiments in the lab, and will therefore provide the student with a range of skills that are required to unravel the complexities of vertebrate genomic regulation.