Biography:Brandon Gaut

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Short description: American evolutionary biologist and geneticist
Brandon S. Gaut
Alma materUniversity of California, Berkeley
University of California, Riverside
Partner(s)Rebecca Gaut
Awards
  • AAAS Fellow (2008)
  • Sloan Foundation Young Investigator Fellowship (1995-1997)
Scientific career
Fields
InstitutionsUniversity of California, Irvine
Doctoral advisorMichael T. Clegg
Notable studentsAoife McLysaght
Adam Eyre-Walker

Brandon Stuart Gaut is an American evolutionary biologist and geneticist who works as a Distinguished Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Irvine.[1]

Gaut's research focuses on the evolution of genetic variation in populations and its impact on adaptation, speciation, and the maintenance of biodiversity, as well as the evolution of transposable elements and their role in shaping genetic architecture and epigenetic state in plants.[2][3]

Education

Gaut earned his undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley in 1985 and his Ph.D. in Genetics from UC Riverside from 1988–1992, under the mentorship of Michael T. Clegg.[4] He was a postdoc at NC State University in the Department of Statistics under Bruce Weir until 1995 before becoming an assistant professor at Rutgers University in 1995. He moved to UC Irvine in 1998 and was named a Distinguished professor in 2020.[5]  

Career

Gaut served as the president-elect, president and past-president for the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution from 2013 to 2015.[citation needed]  He is Editor-in-Chief for Molecular Biology and Evolution.[6] He served administrative roles as Chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from 2006–2013[4] and the Associate Dean for Research in the School of Biological Sciences from 2017–2022.[citation needed]

Gaut was named the Professor of the Year in 2008 at UC Irvine and voted an Outstanding Professor by the senior class.[4] 

Research

Gaut's early work provided several fundamental ideas about the genetic effects of domestication on crop plants; with postdoctoral scholar Adam Eyre-Walker, he used coalescent theory-based models to establish the occurrence of genetic bottlenecks during the domestication of maize,[7] a phenomenon which is now thought to influence the diversity and genome content of many agriculturally important species.[8][9] He later adopted these models to initiate the search for genes that have been selected through the domestication process, estimating that around 1,200 maize genes (~3% of loci) were involved in its domestication.[10] This work established basic approaches that have been adopted across numerous domesticated species.[11]

Together with John Doebley, Gaut provided the first DNA sequence-based estimates for the time of polyploidization event in a plant[12][13] and he has contributed to basic methods used in evolutionary studies, such as the codon model of evolution.[14][15] Later he characterized important epigenetic phenomena, showing that DNA methylation of transposable elements affects gene expression on a genome-wide scale and is a component of selective load[16][17][18] and that genic methylation in plants is evolutionarily conserved.[19]

Gaut's more recent research has focused on genome evolution in grapes, estimating the demographic history of grape domestication and showing that cultivated grapes possess an abundance of deleterious mutations in a heterozygous state compared to their wild progenitor species,[20] likely due to their history of clonal propagation.[21] His lab also identified loci which may confer resistance to the agriculturally destructive bacterium Xylella fastidiosa.[22][23][24]

Gaut has used experimental evolution of E. coli to characterize the extent of epistasis and antagonistic pleiotropy in the evolutionary process.[25]

Selected publications

References

  1. ↑ "UC Irvine - Faculty Profile System" (in en). https://faculty.uci.edu/profile/?facultyId=4561. 
  2. ↑ "Brandon Gaut". https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=1nr7TU0AAAAJ&hl=en. 
  3. ↑ Conduct, Committee on Gene Drive Research in Non-Human Organisms: Recommendations for Responsible; Sciences, Board on Life; Studies, Division on Earth and Life; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering (2016-07-28), "Biographical Sketches of Committee Members" (in en), Gene Drives on the Horizon: Advancing Science, Navigating Uncertainty, and Aligning Research with Public Values (National Academies Press (US)), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK379289/, retrieved 2023-09-17 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 "In Evolution's Garden" (in en). https://www.the-scientist.com/profile/in-evolutions-garden-39237. 
  5. ↑ "Distinguished Professor – Academic Personnel" (in en-US). https://ap.uci.edu/titles-of-distinction/distinguished-professor/. 
  6. ↑ "About MBE". https://academic.oup.com/mbe. 
  7. ↑ Eyre-Walker, Adam; Gaut, Rebecca L.; Hilton, Holly; Feldman, Dawn L.; Gaut, Brandon S. (1998-04-14). "Investigation of the bottleneck leading to the domestication of maize" (in en). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 95 (8): 4441–4446. April 14, 1998. doi:10.1073/pnas.95.8.4441. ISSN 0027-8424. PMID 9539756. Bibcode: 1998PNAS...95.4441E. 
  8. ↑ Doebley, John F.; Gaut, Brandon S.; Smith, Bruce D. (December 2006). "The Molecular Genetics of Crop Domestication". Cell 127 (7): 1309–1321. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2006.12.006. ISSN 0092-8674. PMID 17190597. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2006.12.006. 
  9. ↑ Meyer, Rachel S.; Purugganan, Michael D. (December 2013). "Evolution of crop species: genetics of domestication and diversification" (in en). Nature Reviews Genetics 14 (12): 840–852. doi:10.1038/nrg3605. ISSN 1471-0064. PMID 24240513. https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg3605. 
  10. ↑ Wright, Stephen I.; Bi, Irie Vroh; Schroeder, Steve G.; Yamasaki, Masanori; Doebley, John F.; McMullen, Michael D.; Gaut, Brandon S. (2005-05-27). "The Effects of Artificial Selection on the Maize Genome" (in en). Science 308 (5726): 1310–1314. doi:10.1126/science.1107891. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 15919994. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1107891. 
  11. ↑ Morrell, Peter L.; Buckler, Edward S.; Ross-Ibarra, Jeffrey (February 2012). "Crop genomics: advances and applications" (in en). Nature Reviews Genetics 13 (2): 85–96. doi:10.1038/nrg3097. ISSN 1471-0064. PMID 22207165. https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg3097. 
  12. ↑ Gaut, Brandon S.; Doebley, John F. (1997-06-24). "DNA sequence evidence for the segmental allotetraploid origin of maize" (in en). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 94 (13): 6809–6814. doi:10.1073/pnas.94.13.6809. ISSN 0027-8424. PMID 11038553. Bibcode: 1997PNAS...94.6809G. 
  13. ↑ Force, Allan; Lynch, Michael; Pickett, Bryan; Amores, Angel; Yan, Yi-lin; Postlethwait, John (1999). "Preservation of Duplicate Genes by Complementary, Degenerative Mutations". pp. 1531–1545. doi:10.1093/genetics/151.4.1531. https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/151/4/1531/6047715. 
  14. ↑ Muse, S. V.; Gaut, B. S. (September 1994). "A likelihood approach for comparing synonymous and nonsynonymous nucleotide substitution rates, with application to the chloroplast genome.". Molecular Biology and Evolution 11 (5): 715–724. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.molbev.a040152. ISSN 1537-1719. PMID 7968485. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.molbev.a040152. 
  15. ↑ Kosakovsky Pond, Sergei; Frost, Simon (2005). "Not So Different After All: A Comparison of Methods for Detecting Amino Acid Sites Under Selection". pp. 1208–1222. doi:10.1093/molbev/msi105. https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/22/5/1208/1066893/Not-So-Different-After-All-A-Comparison-of-Methods. 
  16. ↑ Hollister, Jesse D.; Gaut, Brandon S. (August 2009). "Epigenetic silencing of transposable elements: A trade-off between reduced transposition and deleterious effects on neighboring gene expression" (in en). Genome Research 19 (8): 1419–1428. doi:10.1101/gr.091678.109. ISSN 1088-9051. PMID 19478138. 
  17. ↑ Hollister, Jesse D.; Smith, Lisa M.; Guo, Ya-Long; Ott, Felix; Weigel, Detlef; Gaut, Brandon S. (2011-02-08). "Transposable elements and small RNAs contribute to gene expression divergence between Arabidopsis thaliana and Arabidopsis lyrata" (in en). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108 (6): 2322–2327. doi:10.1073/pnas.1018222108. ISSN 0027-8424. PMID 21252301. Bibcode: 2011PNAS..108.2322H. 
  18. ↑ Choi, Jae Young; Lee, Yuh Chwen G. (2020-07-16). "Double-edged sword: The evolutionary consequences of the epigenetic silencing of transposable elements" (in en). PLOS Genetics 16 (7): e1008872. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1008872. ISSN 1553-7404. PMID 32673310. 
  19. ↑ Takuno, Shohei; Gaut, Brandon S. (2013-01-29). "Gene body methylation is conserved between plant orthologs and is of evolutionary consequence" (in en). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110 (5): 1797–1802. doi:10.1073/pnas.1215380110. ISSN 0027-8424. PMID 23319627. Bibcode: 2013PNAS..110.1797T. 
  20. ↑ Zhou, Yongfeng; Massonnet, Mélanie; Sanjak, Jaleal S.; Cantu, Dario; Gaut, Brandon S. (2017-10-31). "Evolutionary genomics of grape ( Vitis vinifera ssp. vinifera ) domestication" (in en). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114 (44): 11715–11720. doi:10.1073/pnas.1709257114. ISSN 0027-8424. PMID 29042518. Bibcode: 2017PNAS..11411715Z. 
  21. ↑ Huang, Xuehui; Huang, Sanwen; Han, Bin; Li, Jiayang (July 2022). "The integrated genomics of crop domestication and breeding". Cell 185 (15): 2828–2839. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2022.04.036. ISSN 0092-8674. PMID 35643084. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2022.04.036. 
  22. ↑ Morales-Cruz, Abraham; Aguirre-Liguori, Jonas; Massonnet, Mélanie; Minio, Andrea; Zaccheo, Mirella; Cochetel, Noe; Walker, Andrew; Riaz, Summaira et al. (2023-05-30). "Multigenic resistance to Xylella fastidiosa in wild grapes (Vitis sps.) and its implications within a changing climate" (in en). Communications Biology 6 (1): 580. doi:10.1038/s42003-023-04938-4. ISSN 2399-3642. PMID 37253933. 
  23. ↑ Quinton, Amy M. (2023-06-15). "Study Reveals Potential Breakthrough in Grapevine Disease Resistance" (in en). https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/study-reveals-potential-breakthrough-grapevine-disease-resistance. 
  24. ↑ California, University of; Irvine. "Study reveals potential breakthrough in grapevine disease resistance" (in en). https://phys.org/news/2023-06-reveals-potential-breakthrough-grapevine-disease.html. 
  25. ↑ Batarseh, Tiffany N; Batarseh, Sarah N; Rodríguez-Verdugo, Alejandra; Gaut, Brandon S (May 2023). "Phenotypic and Genotypic Adaptation of Escherichia coli to Thermal Stress is Contingent on Genetic Background". Molecular Biology and Evolution 40 (5). doi:10.1093/molbev/msad108. ISSN 0737-4038. PMID 37140066. PMC 10195153. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msad108. 



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