Luke McGowan

Luke-4-1
Luke officially joined the Striedter lab in the summer of 2008. Luke's principal research interests span evolutionary neuroscience, evo-devo, animal behavior, and the history and philosophy of biology. His first project in the Striedter lab has been to develop in situ hybridization methods for examining gene expression at early stages of brain development, right around the stages when the brain's major divisions are established. Although some of the needed in situ hybridization probes are available for mammals and chickens, Luke has had to develop new probes to look at other species, such as parakeets and quail. Luke has also begun to work out methods for manipulating brain region size experimentally (e.g. by injecting cell division inhibitors into the brain of young chicken embryos). In the long run, he wants to use these methods to test hypotheses about the developmental mechanisms through which evolution changes neuronal circuitry. The picture below shows one of Luke's embryos, hybridized with probes for Pax6 and Gbx2 so that the midbrain remains unlabeled. When Luke is not working on neuroscience, he spends his time in Los Angeles gardening, hiking, reading literature and exploring the arts.

InSituPic