Welcome to the Lavrov Lab

We are a research group at the Iowa State University. Our main research interests are the evolution of major groups of animals and their genomes.
Our favorite animals are marine non-bilaterian taxa, including Porifera (sponges), Cnidaria (corals, jellyfishes), and Ctenophora (comb jellies). We are particularly interested in their mitochondrial biology and have characterized both their mitochondrial genomes and mitochondrial proteomes (the latter include more than one thousand proteins that are encoded in the nucleus, but function in mitochondria).

In our research we combine field work, bench work, and computational analysis. Specific project we currently work on include (see Research for more details):

  • understanding variation in the rates of mtDNA evolution among animals
  • mRNA editing in Calcaronean sponges, and
  • mitocondrial tRNA import.

We are located at Iowa State University, in the department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology). Students in our group come are involved in several interdepartmental graduate programs, including Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Genetics and Genomics, and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

We are looking for passionate new PhD students, Postdocs, and Master students to join the team (more info) !

We are grateful for funding from Iowa State University, Human Frontiers Science Program, and previous funding from the US National Science Foundation.

News

July 23-28, 2023

Ehsan and Dennis will participated in and present at the SMBE meeting in Ferrara, Italy.

January 12-17, 2023

Mudith and Dennis participated in the Plant and Animal Genomics Conference in San Diego, CA and presented posters "The Draft Genome of the Pink Vase Sponge Niphates Digitalis and Evolution of Animal Mitochondrial Proteome" and "What can non-bilaterian animals tell us about mitochondrial biology and disease?"

November 6-8, 2022

Dennis participated in the Cell Symposia: Multifaceted Mitochondria in Seville, Spain and presented a poster "What can non-bilaterian animals tell us about mitochondrial biology and disease?"

Octover 10-14, 2022

Dennis participated in the 11th World Sponge Conference in Leiden, the Netherlands and presented a talk "Mitochondrial tRNA gene loss and cytosolic tRNA import in Haplosclerida"

Octover 1, 2022

Ehsan Kayal (re-)joined the lab as a Postdoc. Welcome, Ehsan!

August 15, 2022

Momin Ahmed joins the lab as a Ph.D. student. Welcome, Momin!

June 26, 2022

Dennis presented on "The intriguing evolution of the MutS mismatch repair gene family in animals" at the Evolution conference in Cleveland

January 13, 2022

New paper "Large dataset of octocoral mitochondrial genomes provides new insights into mt-mutS evolution and function" in DNA Repair .

November 10, 2021

Merritt Polomsky successfully defended her Master's thesis "Evaluation of the evolutionary history of Clade B of haplosclerid sponges with an emphasis on tRNAs and tRNA synthetases." Congratulations, Merritt!

... see all News