Shannon Gray
 

e-mail: sgray2@nd.edu
 

B. S. Biology, May 2002, Westminster College, New Wilmington, PA

Current Position:
Ph. D. Student, Biological Sciences, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN

Research Interests while in the Hollocher Lab:

My research involved looking at a candidate gene which may be involved in Drosophila hybrid female sterility and inviability. This gene, pumilio, is located on the third chromosome in Drosophila melanogaster, and was selected as a candidate gene because flies containing pumilio ovarette mutant alleles have similar phenotypes to those exhibited by hybrid females from crosses between D. melanogaster and D. simulans. I introduced pumilio mutant alleles into the D. melanogaster rescue strains In(1)AB and In(1)AB,f-M1/C(1)M4,y and crossed these mutant strains with D. simulans strains which normally rescue hybrid lethality and/or sterilty to observe whether mutant pumilio alleles affect hybrid recue. I also used a pumillio construct which rescues the phenotype of pumilio ovarette mutations to determine if adding extra copies of pumilio allows hybrid rescue to occur in crosses involving nonrescue strains of Drosophila simulans and D. melanogaster.