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Carrie Albertin, PhD 2016, Ragsdale Lab

Carrie Albertin, PhD 2016 has been appointed an Assistant Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Curator of Malacology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. While at UChicago as a PhD student, Dr. Albertin was part of the a team who were the first to publish the squid's full genome sequence. Albertin says, "A genome is the first step for answering a lot of questions about the biology of these animals." Knowing the squid's full genome could answer questions about how they camouflage instantaneously, their behavior and agility, and even how they have the largest brain among invertebrates.

At Harvard, the Albertin lab investigates the evolutionary and developmental bases of biological novelty using soft-bodied cephalopods (squid and octopus) as model systems. To enable this work, Carrie and her group have built new tools to study cephalopod biology, including sequencing, assembling, and annotating genomes, developing husbandry approaches, and establishing genome editing in these animals. Building on these tools, the Albertin lab is currently exploring how the anteroposterior, dorsoventral, and proximodistal axes are established and patterned during development, and how the cephalopod nervous system, which is the largest amongst invertebrates, forms during and after embryogenesis.  

Albertin started her lab as a Hibbitt Early Career Fellow at the Marine Biological Laboratory.  As a PhD student, Albertin was a trainee on the NIH T32 Training Program in Developmental Biology.

Part of this article was previously published in the UChicago News.