I received a PhD in Biophysics here at Berkeley studying in the Chemistry department. I discovered the rapidly renaturing "satellite " DNA in drosophila (Dm) and showed that they are located in the heterochromatin. I left posit doc at Cold Spring Harbor Labs and became a virologists studying SV-40 and Adenoviruses. My work there showed that these Viruses integrate without specificity in cells they transformed where replication was non-permissive or very weak. I cloned the first tumor viral chromosomal DNA as showed that the sequences at the junctions were the results of end joining....
After going to Cal as an undergrad I got my PhD at the University of Utah in 2004. I lived in Peru for much of my PhD work, conducting field work near Iquitos Peru, in some of the most species-rich forests on earth. I studied the evolution of habitat specialization by plants to different soils and the role of herbivores and plant defenses in influencing this process. I continued this work for my postdoc at the University of Michigan Society of Fellows and then was hired by UC Berkeley in 2007. I have continued my work on tropical diversity and also have built up a research program...
I am an evolutionary biologist broadly interested in the ecology, evolution, and genomics of adaptive radiation in fishes. My lab uses field experiments, natural history, population genomics, behavioral ecology, functional morphology, quantitative and functional genetics, and phylogenetic methods to dissect this process at the mesoevolutionary scale in rapid radiations of three or more species.
For full research description, please visit Christopher's Faculty Profile.