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Origins

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Difference between revisions of "User:WillRatcliffe"

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|Affiliation=Georgia Tech
 
|Affiliation=Georgia Tech
 
|Email address=william.ratcliff@biology.gatech.edu
 
|Email address=william.ratcliff@biology.gatech.edu
|Related links={{Related link |Related link title=Ratcliffe Lab |Related link URL=https://www.ratclifflab.biosci.gatech.edu/}}  
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|Biography=Research Interests: I am an evolutionary biologist broadly interested in the evolution of complex life. My Ph.D. training focused on the evolutionary stability of cooperation in the legume-rhizorium symbiosis. A similar evolutionary tension lies at the heart of all key events in the origin of complex life, termed the ‘Major Transitions in Evolution’: namely, how do new organisms arise and evolve to be more complex without succumbing to within-organism conflict? Studying the early evolution of multicellular organisms has been particularly difficult because these transitions occurred deep in the past, and transitional forms have largely lost to extinction. As a postdoc, I circumvented this constraint by creating a new approach to study the evolution of multicellularity: we evolved it de novo. Since founding my own research group at Georgia Tech in 2014, I have combined this approach with mathematical modeling and synthetic biology to examine how simple clumps of cells evolve to be more complex. Our research has shown how classical constraints in the origin of multicellularity –e.g., the origin of life cycles, multicellular development, cellular differentiation, and cellular interdependence– can be solved by Darwinian evolution.
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|Related links={{Related link
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|Related link title=Ratcliffe Lab
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|Related link URL=https://www.ratclifflab.biosci.gatech.edu/
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|Related link title=Google Scholar
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|Related link URL=https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=wdVRIS0AAAAJ
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Latest revision as of 20:57, November 4, 2019

Will Ratcliff.png(X)

Name
Will Ratcliffe
Affiliation
Georgia Tech
Email address
william.ratcliff@biology.gatech.edu

Biography

Research Interests: I am an evolutionary biologist broadly interested in the evolution of complex life. My Ph.D. training focused on the evolutionary stability of cooperation in the legume-rhizorium symbiosis. A similar evolutionary tension lies at the heart of all key events in the origin of complex life, termed the ‘Major Transitions in Evolution’: namely, how do new organisms arise and evolve to be more complex without succumbing to within-organism conflict? Studying the early evolution of multicellular organisms has been particularly difficult because these transitions occurred deep in the past, and transitional forms have largely lost to extinction. As a postdoc, I circumvented this constraint by creating a new approach to study the evolution of multicellularity: we evolved it de novo. Since founding my own research group at Georgia Tech in 2014, I have combined this approach with mathematical modeling and synthetic biology to examine how simple clumps of cells evolve to be more complex. Our research has shown how classical constraints in the origin of multicellularity –e.g., the origin of life cycles, multicellular development, cellular differentiation, and cellular interdependence– can be solved by Darwinian evolution.

Related links

Involvement in the Origins Research Theme

Presenter

This user is listed as a presenter for the following agenda items:

  1. Evolving Chemical Systems/Talk 8 + Large Group Discussion

Attendee

This user is listed as an attendee for the following meetings:

  1. Evolving Chemical Systems