Developmental Plasticity: Thriving under Nutritional Fluctuations
How do animals optimize their fitness in response to changing nutritional conditions?
Animals must navigate environments where food availability fluctuates. This requires a delicate balance between rapid growth during abundance and survival during scarcity. We investigate the molecular mechanisms that sense nutritional cues, how they alter gene expression, and how this regulation ultimately impacts organism-scale phenotypes, such as growth, reproduction, and aging. We thereby strive to understand the molecular underpinnings of tradeoffs between these fundamental life history traits and how animals navigate these tradeoffs to make the best out of their environment.
Together, we aim to learn how organisms maintain robustness within an environment yet remain plastic across different environments.
