October 2024: On the way to pizza dinner. From left to right: Andrea, Javier, Rike, Chloé, Jenny
Rike Stelkens (Professor, Wallenberg Academy Fellow)
rike.stelkens@zoologi.su.se
I am an evolutionary biologist interested in how biodiversity is generated and maintained. I use experimental evolution and comparative genomics in the yeast model system to understand how populations adapt to environmental change.
bluesky:@stelkens.bsky.social twitter:@StelkensLab
Chloé Haberkorn (Postdoc)
chloe.haberkorn@zoologi.su.se
Chloé is a biologist and bioinformatician working on evolutionary genomics, with particular interest on the adaptation mechanisms of organisms to selective pressures. During her PhD, she studied insecticide resistance mechanisms in the nightmarish bed bug Cimex lectularius, using large-scale genomics data and molecular genetics. Now, Chloé is exploring the genomics of thermal adaptation in Saccharomyces yeasts.
Lorena Ament Velásquez (Independent VR Postdoc)
lorena.ament@zoologi.su.se
Lore is interested in genome architecture and evolution, speciation, and biodiversity. In her Swedish Research Council grant, she characterizes a special gene family, the fungal NOD-like receptors (NLRs). In addition to their normal function (e.g. vegetative incompatibility and immunity), some NLRs have pleiotropic effects on sexual compatibility. Lore explores the potential contribution of NLRs to the buildup of reproductive isolation between species.
Rubie Min Lu (PhD student)
min.lu@zoologi.su.se
Rubie is a PhD student studying parallel climate adaptation using wild yeast populations from Chile and Europe. She uses strains from vast latitudinal ranges – from temperate to subpolar regions – to map genotypes to thermal phenotypes, and applies experiment evolution to measure their capacity to adapt to climate change.
Jenny Söderwind (MSc Student)
Jenny is a Master’s student studying the effect of temperature stress on fertility (sporulation efficiency) across different species of yeast, using experimental evolution, fitness assays, tetrad dissections, and petite phenotype screens.
Carolin Gierer (Laboratory Assistant)
Caro is a lab assistant working on many different things in the yeast lab, from daily lab routines like making media and autoclaving, to serial transfers in evolution experiments, flow cytometry, growth curve measurements, running competition assays, real time PCR, running gels, and preparing samples for sequencing.
Earlier lab pictures
December 2022: Lab get together before the department Julbord. Not shown in the picture: All the yeast lurking at us from the oak tree. 👀
August 2021 Lab Party! From left to right: Maria Celorio, Joao Frazao, Alex Rego, Devin Bendixsen, Rike Stelkens, Ciaran Gilchrist, Lorena Ament, Sofia de Beir. Missing from the picture is Noah Gettle, Javier Pinto (and my messy house). I wish I remembered the joke Ciaran was cracking.
September 2020: Out for a mushroom hunt in the forest north of Stockholm. The harvest was meager but the fun was plentiful! Missing from the picture are Maria and João.
October 2019: On a lab outing in Skånsen (Stockholm’s open air museum). We are eight nationalities and counting! Yes, some of us (me) are holding the flag upside down…
March 2019: On our way to go curling!
LAB ALUMNI
Jennifer Molinet (Postdoc)
jennifer.molinet@zoologi.su.se
Jennifer is a microbiologist and biotechnologist interested in understanding the genetic and molecular basis of yeast adaptation to different environmental conditions. One line of her research focuses on the generation of new yeast strains for fermentation processes. Jennifer is currently investigating the adaptive potential of naturally hot- and cold-adapted yeast species to high temperature stress (simulating global warming scenarios), using long-term experimental evolution and comparative genomics.
Javier Pinto (Postdoc)
Javier is a molecular ecologist, focused on the adaptive evolution of interspecific yeast hybrids – especially their capacity to adapt to new environments. He is also interested in the fungal biodiversity assessment of boreal and tropical forests. In his PhD, Javier investigated the importance of molecular mechanisms in the adaptation of different Saccharomyces species to cold temperatures, including the role of promoter and allele types.
Alexandre Rêgo (PhD student)
Alex PhD research used experimental evolution in yeast and seed beetles to find out how repeatable the origins, dynamics, and outcomes of adaptation to simple and complex environments are. Alex graduated in September 2023.
Maria de la Paz Celorio Mancera (Research Associate, Lab Manager)
Maria worked with us as a research analyst and lab manager from 2017-2023.
Ciaran Gilchrist (PhD student)
Ciaran’s PhD focused on comparing the risks and benefits of hybridization for adaptation to changing and stressful environments. Ciaran graduated in Oct 2022.
João Frazão
João is an evolutionary biologist whose work in the lab focused on fitness landscape theory and hybridization.
Devin Bendixsen (Postdoc)
Devin is a bioinformatician specializing in computational genomics and empirical fitness landscape construction and analysis. His research interests range from mutational interactions and their effect on mutational pathways to genetic mechanisms underlying evolutionary adaptation. He mainly focused on understanding the role of hybridization in genetic adaptation to novel environments using comparative genomics.
Noah Gettle (Postdoc)
Noah is an evolutionary biologist. He is broadly interested in the origins of biological complexity with a focus on understanding how interactions within and between levels of biology (e.g. genomics, cell physiology, and cellular interactions) can generate complex phenotypes and constrain/expand evolvability.
Dragan Stajiç (Postdoc)
Dragan is interested in the molecular and cellular mechanisms affecting evolutionary processes including epigenetic mechanisms. Dragan worked on the evolution of antibiotic resistance and the molecular basis of phenotypic switching, a mechanism by which one genotype produces two distinct phenotypes, which may help adaptation to complex environments.
Zebin Zhang (Postdoc)
Zebin is a bioinformatician and molecular biologist. In our lab, he used ddRADseq and long read seq data from interspecific yeast hybrids to understand how hybrid genomes are assembled and selected under environmental stress, testing predictions of quantitative genetics with a special focus on epistasis. Zebin is also interested in the adaptive value of ploidy variation, and in detecting signatures of domestication in the genome.
Claire Brice (Postdoc)
Claire is a microbiologist and biotechnologist interested in understanding genetic adaptation to changing and stressful environments
Erik Zhivkoplias (MSc student)
Erik was a student from Uppsala University, doing his MSc project in our lab. Erik compared the performance of different methods and software tools to estimate selection coefficients, using time-series genomic data from different model systems (yeast, seed beetles, and stick insects).
Julie Grosse-Sommer (BSc student)
Julie did the lab work for her BSc thesis (officially at Maastricht University) in our lab. She measured fitness and ran direct competition assays between the strains coming out of Ciaran’s long-term evolution study.
Lara Beckmann (lab technician and MSc student)
Lara was an undergrad student at Stockholm University. She worked on the evolution of telomere length in yeast populations adapting to stressful conditions with Devin. Lara used experimental evolution, optical density measures, and a PCR-based approach. Also, Lara designed our lovely lab logo!
Viktoria Köppä (lab technician and MSc student)
v_cmi@hotmail.com
Viktoria is an undergrad student at Stockholm University. She helped us out with lots of things in the lab, e.g. with fine tuning simple and complex stress environments, dissecting the tetrads of divergent yeast crosses and making media.
Pauline Caillault (Lab technician)
Pauline collected spore viability data and turned out to be an ace yeast tetrad dissecter. She also helped running short term evolutionary rescue experiments and making hybrid crosses.
Sofia de Beir (MSc student)
Sofia was a visiting MSc student in bioinformatics from the University of Minho (Portugal). Sofia developed pipelines to analyze the (hybrid) genomes coming out of Ciaran’s long term evolution experiments.
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