In the Spotlight-Early Career Researcher.

Abstract

Nicolas Rohner is an Edward Mallinckrodt Foundation Grantee Nicolas is a Guest Co-Editor of this special issue on Cavefish Website: https://research.stowers.org/rohnerlab/ With whom and where did you study? After studying genetics in Erlangen, Germany, I moved to the Max-Planck-Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen. I worked on zebrafish developmental genetics as a graduate student in the laboratory of Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard. After graduating, I moved to the US to work with Cliff Tabin as postdoc on evolutionary genetics. This is where I got introduced to the cavefish system, the system that I am working now in my laboratory at the Stowers Institute in Kansas City. What got you interested in Biology? When did you know EvoDevo was for you? Since a young age, my parents took me hiking and mushroom hunting. I quickly became fascinated by the diversity I encountered. I learned everything about the fauna and flora in the forests near my little town in Germany. Maybe because of this, biology classes in school felt naturally to me and I decided to major in biology in college, even though career prospects were limited at that time (this was before the word biotech became popular). But I knew that I wanted to stay in academia. It felt like the best place for understanding nature's mysteries. Naturally, I became interested in the field of EvoDevo as it seemed to provide the best approach for my lifelong dream to find the molecular mechanisms underlying the diversity I admired as a child. What is your experience with setting up and running an EvoDevo lab? Obviously working with organisms that are less established for laboratory use does provide enormous challenges. There are fewer protocols for breeding and maintenance, institutional animal care committees need more time to adapt to the new systems, and the critical mass of researchers needed to push forward new techniques and initiatives is often lacking. Luckily, the Stowers Institute was extremely supportive and helped immensely to push my agenda forward. But there is also a huge advantage on working with something new, one that always gave me immense satisfaction: everything you discover is new and no one else may be working on it. This has been very fulfilling and motivating to the people in my laboratory. Who was your most influential mentor? I was fortunate to train with two of my scientific heroes and have been strongly influenced by both of them: Christiane “Janni” Nüsslein-Volhard and Cliff Tabin. Janni has taught me the rigorous side of science, questioning results and making the science as solid and exact as possible without wasting time on useless experiments. From a personal perspective she taught me humility and sincerity, while scientifically I learned all about the fascinating field of developmental genetics in fish and flies. When I joined Cliffs lab, my research thrived from the different influences of developmental and evolutionary studies there. His lab was buzzling with intimidatingly smart and creative people working on all sorts of different animals. We had cavefish, zebrafish, axolotl, snails, seahorses, emu eggs, quails, and many other populating the lab. This was an incredibly intellectually stimulating and inspiring atmosphere. The sky was the limit. I will never forget this amazing experience. What do you see as the future of EvoDevo? This are obviously exciting times for EvoDevo. Increased access to sequencing has allowed for the emergence of many genomes of different animals but also other large data sets coming from RNA-Seq or other genome wide approaches. In addition, CRISPR allows for the first time to do some functional validation. But I feel the biggest strength of the EvoDevo field is its focus on interdisciplinary questions, which broadens one's perspective significantly. I am not going to repeat Dobzhansky here, but I personally wished for an even stronger focus on the Evo in EvoDevo and a stronger bridging of the two communities. For example, while almost every developmental biology meeting has a symposium dedicated to EvoDevo, this is not common for evolutionary meetings. I feel this can be improved and the EvoDevo community is best equipped for doing so. I also would recommend young researchers to not only fixate on the Devo in EvoDevo, there are many interesting aspects of EvoDevo that are worth exploring and that are often understudied. EvoNeuro, EvoPhysio, EcoEvoDevo, all these are important subdisciplines of EvoDevo that have immense potential.