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Alex Keene, Ph.D.

Affiliations: 
2021- Biology Texas A & M University, College Station, TX, United States 
Area:
Evolution, genetics, biology, behavior
Website:
https://www.alexckeene.com/
Google:
"Alex Keene"
Bio:

Neural regulation of sleep, appetite, and energy homeostasis is critical to an animal’s survival and under stringent evolutionary pressure. Flies, like mammals, suppress sleep when starved, providing a system to interrogate interactions between sleep and metabolism. We have performed a large genetic screens to identify novel regulators of sleep-metabolism interactions, and are currently investigating the genes and neural circuits that integrate these processes. As a complementary approach, we have been working to establish Mexican cavefish as a model for the evolution of sleep in a nutrient-poor environment. We have generated comparative brain atlases and whole-brain functional imaging approaches that have identified a reorganization of the hypothalamus and increased slow wave sleep intensity in cavefish. Together this system has potential to identify conserved genetic, physiological, and anatomical mechanisms associated with variable sleep

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Parents

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Scott Waddell grad student 2002-2006 UMASS Medical School
Justin Blau post-doc 2007-2011 NYU (Chemistry Tree)

Children

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Ian Michael Oh research assistant 2013-2015 University of Nevada Reno
Kaya Harper grad student 2023- Texas A & M (Evolution Tree)

Collaborators

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Suzanne McGaugh collaborator UMN (Evolution Tree)
BETA: Related publications

Publications

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Choy S, Thakur S, Polyakov E, et al. (2024) Mutations in the albinism gene alter vision-dependent prey capture behavior in the Mexican tetra. Biorxiv : the Preprint Server For Biology
Warren WC, Rice ES, X M, et al. (2024) Astyanax mexicanus surface and cavefish chromosome-scale assemblies for trait variation discovery. G3 (Bethesda, Md.)
Warren WC, Rice ES, Maggs X, et al. (2023) Astyanax mexicanus surface and cavefish chromosome-scale assemblies for trait variation discovery. Biorxiv : the Preprint Server For Biology
Moran RL, Richards EJ, Ornelas-García CP, et al. (2023) Selection-driven trait loss in independently evolved cavefish populations. Nature Communications. 14: 2557
Perry A, McGaugh SE, Keene AC, et al. (2022) CaveCrawler: An interactive analysis suite for cavefish bioinformatics. G3 (Bethesda, Md.)
Moran RL, Jaggard JB, Roback EY, et al. (2022) Hybridization underlies localized trait evolution in cavefish. Iscience. 25: 103778
O'Gorman M, Thakur S, Imrie G, et al. (2021) Pleiotropic function of the oca2 gene underlies the evolution of sleep loss and albinism in cavefish. Current Biology : Cb
Mack KL, Jaggard JB, Persons JL, et al. (2021) Repeated evolution of circadian clock dysregulation in cavefish populations. Plos Genetics. 17: e1009642
Warren WC, Boggs TE, Borowsky R, et al. (2021) A chromosome-level genome of Astyanax mexicanus surface fish for comparing population-specific genetic differences contributing to trait evolution. Nature Communications. 12: 1447
McGaugh SE, Kowalko JE, Duboué E, et al. (2020) Dark world rises: The emergence of cavefish as a model for the study of evolution, development, behavior, and disease. Journal of Experimental Zoology. Part B, Molecular and Developmental Evolution
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