Amy Herbert

Amy Herbert received a Ph.D. in Developmental, Regenerative, and Stem Cell Biology from Washington University in St. Louis and was a Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. She also received a Grass Fellowship as well as three Early Career Whitman Fellowships from the Marine Biological Laboratory. At the University of Chicago, the Herbert lab is interested in understanding the molecular and genetic mechanisms that drive the evolution of novel vertebrate traits using a combination of model and non model organisms. A recently developed research organism in the lab is the sea robin, a marine fish that exhibits multiple evolutionary innovations, including leg like structures that allow the fish to walk and taste food on the ocean floor. Using sea robins alongside stickleback fish, zebrafish, and other unique species, the Herbert lab address several fundamental questions in evolutionary biology, including whether similar evolutionary outcomes arise by the same molecular routes, whether new traits are controlled by many genes or by a few key loci, and how gene regulatory networks evolve to produce novel traits.