Alan Marron
BBSRC PhD Student
Tel: + 44 (0) 1223 336653 or 31772
Fax: +44 (0) 1223 337766
Interests and research
My PhD research concerns the evolution of silica biomineralization in the eukaryotes. Biomineralization is of great importance from a physiological, biochemical, palaeontological and geochemical point of view. Within the eukaryotes all of the supergroups (except the Excavata) contain silica-forming taxa, however little is known about the homology or convergent evolution of silica biomineralization within or between groups. Is silica formed by a conserved ancestral mechanism, a similar mechanism that has evolved multiple times convergently or has there been many different evolutions of many different mechanisms?
As part of my work I am studying silica formation in choanoflagellates. Choanoflagellates are protists that are the closest unicellular relatives of the Metazoa. One group of choanoflagellates, the Acanthoecids, produce a lorica (basket-like structure) made of silica. I am studying the molecular biology of lorica formation, using bioinformatic analysis of EST and genomic data.
This project is jointly supervised by Michael Akam, Giselle Walker, and Mark Field
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