Carrie Albertin Joins OEB Faculty

Carrie Albertin joins OEB as Assistant Professor and Curator of Malacology in the MCZ. Carrie’s lab investigates one of biology’s most fascinating questions: how new forms and features evolve. Using soft-bodied cephalopods — squid and octopus — as model systems, the lab explores the evolutionary and development origins of biological novelty in animals. To do this, Carrie and her team have developed a set of tools to study cephalopod biology, from sequencing, assembling, and annotating genomes to developing husbandry and establishing genome editing. With these tools, the team is now exploring how body axes - anteroposterior, dorsoventral, and proximodistal - are established and patterned during development. They are also probing the formation of the cephalopod nervous system, the largest and most complex amongst invertebrates, tracing how it emerges during embryogenesis and continues to develop beyond it.