A three year PhD position is now available to be started soon. I recently was granted a DFG grant to hire a PhD student to work on the evolution of recombination rates. In the project we will try to study how (in)flexible the recombination landscape of fission yeast is and if strong selection can generate recombination hotspots, coldspots and super genes. This question is of relevance for the evolution of sex chromosomes, mating types, but also for example for local or divergent adaptation.

In the project we will combine experimental evolution approaches, analyses of natural variation in fission yeast and genomic analyses for variants. In collaboration with Dr. Alexander Lorenz at Aberdeen University UK, we will then perform functional analysis to further understand potential mechanisms responsible for variation in recombination rates.