GENETICS is pleased to announce three new editors: Kavita Jain, Amanda Larracuente , and Tina Tootle‌‌.

GENETICS

Kavita Jain

Kavita Jain Headshot

Kavita Jain is a theoretical physicist by training and has been working on problems in theoretical population genetics for more than a decade. She is interested in understanding the adaptive dynamics of microbial populations, evolutionary dynamics of complex traits, and evolution of genetic systems— in particular, mutation rates and sex and recombination. She is currently a full Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore.

Amanda Larracuente 

Amanda Larracuente headshot

Amanda Larracuente is an Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Rochester working in evolutionary and functional genomics. She received a BS in Biology from Canisius College and a PhD in Genetics from Cornell University, working on Drosophila genome evolution, population genetics, and sex chromosome evolution. During her postdoc at the University of Rochester, she worked in Drosophila evolutionary genetics and meiotic drive. She is interested in understanding how selfish genetic elements shape genome evolution. Her lab combines genomic, cytological, and molecular approaches to study the evolution of genomic repeats in pericentromeres, centromeres, and on sex chromosomes. She held a Stephen Biggar and Elisabeth Asaro fellowship in Data Science (2017-2020). She also received an NSF CAREER award (2018-2023) to study the evolution of Drosophila centromere organization, and to support and train diverse groups of students in computational biology.

Tina Tootle‌‌‌

Tina Tootle headshot

Tina Tootle earned her BS in Microbiology at the University of Maryland, College Park and her PhD in Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There, under the mentorship of Dr. Ilaria Rebay, Tina used the power of Drosophila genetics to make seminal discoveries about conserved regulators of eye development. Tina then completed her postdoctoral studies in the laboratory of Dr. Allan Spradling at the Carnegie Institution for Science, where she began the studies she continues in her own laboratory. Tina joined that faculty in the Anatomy and Cell Biology Department at the University of Iowa, Carver College of Medicine in 2009, and is currently an Associate Professor. The Tootle lab uses Drosophila oogenesis as a model to understand how prostaglandins regulate the actin cytoskeleton to control morphogenesis and collective cell migration, the diverse functions of the actin regulator Fascin, and the development roles and regulation of nuclear actin.

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