Hopi Hoekstra and her Tale of Many Burrowing Mice

Dr. Hoekstra's talk was a celebration of what Darwin got right as well as what he didn't quite get right: the missing link of heritability. From a young Crick's grandfather being a shoemaker who collaborated with Darwin to the last paper of Darwin in the 'little known journal' Nature, we heard about the history of the discovery of the units that control heritability. (And as Hopi says, it's not a question of if you've read On the Origin of Species, but when you will!)

We further also learnt that burrows that mice and various other species make are an example of an 'extended phenotype' phenotype that is increasingly being used to characterize gene expression.

One major takeaway from the talk: Hopi LOVES deer mice. She also loves Adams House a lot because it's 'got all the tunnels and all the mice *wink wink*'. Through examples, we were shown the newer scientific finding that convergence of the phenotype of the grad students with that of their PI’s has historically been happening. The search is on for why this seems to happen.