Joe Thornton

Thornton Lab NEWS

April 2006	Published in Science: Our paper -- by postdoc Jamie Bridgam, graduate student Sean Carroll, and Joe -- on the evolution of hormone-receptor complexity. By resurrecting an ancient hormone receptor, we show that the mineralocorticoid receptor/aldosteorne partnership evolved by Molecular Exploitation, and identify the two crucial amino acid changes that led to the evolution of present-day corticoid receptor specificity. Click at right for the paper.
April 2006	Chris Adami wrote a very elegant commentary in Science on our paper about the evolution of complexity. Click at right for the website or here for a pdf.
April 2006	The New York Times published a news story on our paper in Science and its implications for Intelligent Design. Click at right for the link or here for the pdf.
April 2006	The Wall Street Journal published a news story on our paper in Science and its implications for Intelligent Design. Click at right for the link or here for the pdf.
April 2006	The Christian Science Monitor published a nice column about our paper in Science on the evolution of complexity. Click at right for the link.
April 2006	Nature Reviews Genetics published a brief summary of our paper in Science on the evolution of complexity. The review is a nice treatment of three recent studies examining the trajectories by which new molecular functions evolve. Click at right for the link.
April 2006	Carl Zimmer wrote several incisive entries about our Science paper on his brilliant blog about evolution, The Loom. Read the story here.
April 2006	The Eugene Register-Guard published a nice news story on our paper in Science and its implications for Intelligent Design. Click at right for the link or here for the pdf.
April 2006	The National Science Foundation, which funded the work in our Science paper, wrote this summary of the work, along with some very nice images illustrating it. Click on the icon to read it.
April 2006	The Eugene Register-Guard has a very nice editorial, "Keeping it Real," on the implications of our paper and recent paleontological discoveries for the "controversy" about evolution. Click at right for the link or here for the pdf.
March 2006	Joe was named a fellow of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Click here for the UO news story.
January 2005	Joe received an NSF CAREER award. Click here to read the UO news story.
June 2005	View the photos and video from Hagfishpalooza '05. Click the photo at right.
April 2005	New Scientist article on resurrecting ancestral genes. This is a terrific popular story about how the Benner, Chang, and Thornton labs are using ancestral gene resurrection to test hypotheses about the evolution of ancient proteins.
March 2005	Listen to a CBC radio interview with Joe and Belinda Chang (U. Toronto) on resurrecting ancestral genes. Click on the icon at right to listen. (Belinda's interview lasts until about minute 9, then Joe comes on.)
March 2005	Published in Cell: Our evolutionary analysis of SF-1 and LRH-1 structures and sequences, in collaboration with Holly Ingraham and Robert Fletterick's groups at UCSF. We show that the rodent LRH-1 transcription factors evolved constitutive activity from a ligand-regulated ancestor, and identify a small number of amino acid changes that caused this shift. Along with our similar findings on mollusk estrogen receptors, this result adds to the evidence against the "ancestral orphan" theory of nuclear receptor evolution. Click at right to read the paper.
October 2004	Published in Nature : Our paper, "Performance of maximum parsimony and likelihood phylogenetics when evolution is heterogeneous." We show that heterogeneity in the evolutionary process can make current methods for phylogenetic inference strongly biased. Click at right to go to the paper.
May 2004	Wall Street Journal story on resurrecting ancient genes, based on our Nature Reviews Genetics article. Click at right to read.
May 2004	*Published in Nature Reviews Genetics:* Our paper, "Resurrecting ancient genes: Experimental Analysis of Extinct Molecules," in which we discuss the history, technology, advantages, and pitfalls of this new approach to experimentally testing evolutionary hypotheses. Click at right to read.
September 2003	*Published in Science* :** Our paper, "Resurrection of the ancestral steroid receptor: ancient origin of estrogen signaling." By identifying the first steroid receptor in an invertebrate -- the estrogen receptor of the sea slug Aplysia californica -- we show that the steroid receptor gene family is far more ancient than previously thought. We then resurrect the gene for the ancestor of all present-day steroid receptor genes and show that it had the specific functions of an estrogen receptor. Click at right to read the paper.
September 2003	Portland Oregonian story about our paper in Science. Click on the sea slug at right to read the article.
September 2003	Nature Reviews Genetics feature by Tanita Casci about our paper in Science. Click on the sea slug at right to read the article.
A long, long time ago	*Review of Pandora's Poison* in Nature by Prof. Terry Collins.** This isn't exactly "news", but why not post it? Click at right to read.