Kirsten Bomblies

Assistant Professor of Organismic & Evolutionary Biology

Phone: 617-495-9484
E-mail:
Office: HUH 224, 22 Divinity Avenue

Plants face a tough challenge: they are rooted to the spot where they land as seeds and to survive they must respond appropriately to the vagaries of their environment; and all this within the constraints of a sessile lifestyle! How do they do this? What genetic mechanisms control plant adaptation to their biotic and abiotic environments? To understand this, we use two closely related species as models: Arabidopsis thaliana (the fruit fly of the plant world) and its close relative, Arabidopsis arenosa (which, unlike A. thaliana, is an obligate outcrosser and has numerous other interesting traits not found in A. thaliana).

We have two major foci, unified by the theme of adaptation:

1. We are extending work started during my postdoc on hybrid necrosis, a type of genetic incompatibility caused by hyperactivation of immune responses. We want to better characterize the molecular mechanisms of necrosis as well as understand the precise mechanisms underlying the well-known effect that temperature has on pathogen and stress responses. A longer-term goal is to understand how the threshold of this temperature sensitivity is modulated as populations adapt to novel or changing climates.

2. We are using high-throughput genomics, genetics, and population genetic approaches to study adaptation and population patterns in Arabidopsis arenosa. In particular we are seeking to quantify and characterize adaptations to habitat and substrate type (e.g. calcerous versus non-calcerous, exposed versus shaded, etc…), and to find out whether such adaptations impact gene flow. We are also investigating how population size, fragmentation, genetic diversity, and population connectivity affect these attributes.

Current group members

Brian Arnold – PhD student . Population genetics and genomics of adaptation in A. arenosa.

Jesse Hollister – Postdoc. Population genetics and genomics of adaptation in A. arenosa.

Ben Hunter – Postdoc. Molecular genetics of hybrid necrosis and temperature responses.

Joshua St. Louis – Lab Manager / Research Assistant. Diverse projects.

Related publications

Hunter, B. and Bomblies, K. The genetics of divergence and speciation in the Arabidopsis genus. The Arabidopsis Book 2010. In preparation.

Bomblies, K. (2009) Too much of a good thing? Hybrid necrosis as a by-product of plant immune system diversification. Invited Review. Botany. 87, pp. 1013-1022.

Related publications from my postdoc

Bomblies, K. and Weigel, D. (2007) Arabidopsis- a model genus for speciation. Current Opinion in Genetics and Development 17, pp. 500-504.

Bomblies, K.*, Lempe, J.*, Epple, P., Warthmann, N., Lanz, C., Dangl, J. L. and Weigel, D. (2007) Autoimmune response as a mechanism for a Dobzhansky-Muller type incompatibility syndrome in plants. PLoS Biology 5, pp. 1962-1972. *Indicates equal contribution by these authors

Bomblies, K., and Weigel, D. (2007) Hybrid necrosis: Autoimmunity as a potential gene flow barrier for plant species. Nature Reviews Genetics 8, pp. 382-389.