Prof Sandie Baldauf

Department of Biology
Box 373
University of York
Heslington, York
YO10 5YW

phone:  +44 (0)1904 32 8635
fax:       +44 (0)1904 32 8545
email:    slb14@york.ac.uk

1990:PhD, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
1991-1993:Alfred P Sloan Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute for Marine Biosciences, Halifax, Nova Scotia
1994-1998:Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Biochemistry, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia
1999-2004:Lecturer in Bioinformatics, Department of Biology, University of York, UK
2005-present:Professor, Department of Biology, University of York, UK

RESEARCH INTERESTS
The research in my lab is focused on molecular evolution, which we study using a combination of molecular biology and bioinformatic tools. We are particularly interested in evolutionary relationships among the major groups of living organisms - the deep branches in the tree of life - and in using these relationships to understand how molecular biochemical and morphological characters evolve. Resolving these relationships requires broad evolutionary trees - random sampling across the tree of life. However, it also requires deep sampling - understanding relationships within groups, in order to distinguish group-wide characteristics from subgroup anomalies. Therefore, we are becoming increasingly interested in the molecular phylogeny and morphological evolution of the eukaryotic supergroup known as Amoebozoa. This is an ancient group, probably as old as animals and fungi together, but one about which we know very little. Nonetheless, Amoebozoa are probably the closest living relatives of the supergroup Opisthokonta (animals+fungi), possess tremendous molecular and morphological diversity including independent evolution of multicellularity, and may lie close to the root of the eukaryote tree.

Current research projects in the lab include 1) molecular phylogeny of choanoflagellates, 2) molecular and morphological evolution in social amoebas (Dictyostelia), 3) deep phylogeny of the eukaryotes emphasizing Amoebozoa, 4) development of protocols and methods for the analysis of concatenated sequence data, and 5) molecular evolution of protein synthesis GTPases (PS-GTPases).

PhD PROJECTS FOR 2006
The Origin of Multi-cellularity in Social Amoebas
The Mycetozoa (so-called "social amoebas" or "slime moulds") are a large and ancient group of organisms. They also appear to be the closest living relative of animals and fungi, closer even than green plants. One of the intriguing features of Mycetozoa is the fact that they possess a complex life cycle that culminates in the development of a true multicellular fruiting body. We have completed the first molecular based family tree of the Mycetozoa. In the next stage of this research, we will begin to use this tree to investigate important questions in mycetozoan evolution. In particular, we are interested in determining how certain genes are involved in controlling cell-cell communication and multicellular development in the different species with different developmental strategies and fruiting body morphologies.

Evolution of Protein Structure in Bacteria
Molecular phylogenetics has defined well the major phyla of bacteria. However, resolving relationships amongst phyla has proven much more difficult. This is due to a variety of factors including widespread lateral gene transfer and mutational saturation of individual genes. Therefore, we need to investigate other methods and data for reconstructing the deepest branches in the Bacterial Tree of Life. Recently, there has been increasing interest in the use of "rare genomic changes" (RGCs), such as insertions and deletions (indels), as phylogenetic markers. However, we do not yet know how these characters evolve, for example how often they can occur in parallel or be completely reversed. Thus there is a strong possibility that these data are much more fallible than is currently assumed. We have developed software for automatically extracting indel information from large sequence alignments using flexible criteria. The project would involve further development of this software to expand our current database of indels, and to analyse the structural patterns in these data.

CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS

• Title: The root of the eukaryote tree
  BBSRC: 01/10/05 - 31/09/07
  
• Title: Molecular and morphological evolution in choanoflagellates, and the nature of their relationship to animals
  BBSRC: 01/10/06 - 31/09/08
  Collaboration with Barry Leadbeater, University of Birmingham
  

LAB MEMBERS
Postdoctoral fellows

Students

Technicians

Bioinformatics lunchclub
This seminar series funded jointly by the Department of Biology and the Department of Computer Science is organised by Johanna Fehling and Gemma Atkinson. Click here for more information.

Some references

• P Schaap, T Winckler, M Nelson, E Alvarez-Curto, B Elgie, H Hagiwara, J Cavender, A Milano-Curto, DE Rozen, T Dingermann, R Mutzel, SL Baldauf. "Molecular phylogeny and evolution of morphology in social amoebas" (submitted).


• ST Steenkamp, J Wright, SL Baldauf (2006) "The protistan origins of animals and fungi", Mol. Biol. Evol. 23:93-106.


• E Alvarez-Curto, DE Rozen, AV Ritchie, C Fouquet, SL Baldauf, P Schaap (2005) "Evolutionary origin of cAMP-based chemoattraction in the social amoebae", Proc Nat'l Acad Sci USA, 102(18):6385-90.


• Baldauf, SL (2003) "The Deep Roots of Eukaryotes", Science, 300:1703-1706.


• SL Baldauf (2003) "Phylogeny for the faint of heart: a tutorial", Trends Genet., 19:345-51.


• Baldauf, SL, Roger, AJ, Wenk-Siefert, I, Doolittle, WF (2000) "A Kingdom Level Phylogeny of Eukayotes Based on Combined Protein Data", Science, 290:972-977.


• Baldauf, SL, and Doolittle, WF (1997) "Origin and evolution of the slime molds (Mycetozoa)", Proc Nat'l Acad Sci USA, 94:12007-12.


• Baldauf, SL and Palmer, JD (1993) "Animals and fungi are each other's closest relatives: Congruent evidence from multiple proteins", Proc Nat'l Acad Sci USA, 90:11558-11562.


• Baldauf, SL and Palmer, JD (1990) "Evolutionary transfer of the chloroplast tufA gene to the nucleus Nature, 344:262-5.