• Title Assistant Professor of Biology
  • Education PhD, Harvard University
  • Web Address http://wunderlichlab.org
  • Phone 617-353-3833
  • Area of Interest regulation of gene expression; enhancers; developmental biology; systems biology; innate immunology
  • CV

Current Research

Regulatory DNA encodes the gene regulatory networks that are required for virtually every process in an animal, from development to immunity. The Wunderlich lab is interested in understanding how a gene regulatory network’s tasks influence its architecture, robustness, and evolvability. To probe these questions, we use two model systems: the Drosophila early embryonic patterning system and the Drosophila innate immune response. In both systems, we pair imaging-based and genomic measurements of gene expression with statistical and physically based computational models to explore questions of gene regulatory network function. We exploit naturally occurring sequence variation between individuals and species as a tool to measure how changes in regulatory DNA affect transcriptional regulation.

Selected Publications

  • BA Ramirez-Corona, AC Love, S Chandrasekaran, JA Preshcer, Z Wunderlich. Longitudinal monitoring of individual infection progression in Drosophila melanogaster. (Submitted; available on bioRxiv). doi: 10.1101/2021.08.17.456698
  • R Waymack, M Gad, Z Wunderlich. Molecular competition can shape enhancer activity in the Drosophila embryo. (Accepted at iScience; available on bioRxiv). doi: 10.1101/2021.05.07.443186
  • L Li, R Waymack, M Gad, Z Wunderlich. Two promoters integrate multiple enhancer inputs to drive wild-type knirps expression in the D. melanogaster embryo. (Accepted at GENETICS; available on bioRxiv). doi: 10.1101/2021.03.23.436657
  • BA Ramirez-Corona, S Fruth, O Ofoegbu, Z Wunderlich. The mode of immune-responsive gene expression divergence in D. melanogaster is infection-specific. Genome Research. (2021). doi: 10.1101/gr.269597.120
  • E Kvon, R Waymack, M Gad, Z Wunderlich. Enhancer Redundancy in Development and Disease. Nature Reviews Genetics. (2021).
 doi: 10.1038/s41576-020-00311-x
  • R Waymack, A Fletcher, G Enciso, Z Wunderlich. Shadow enhancers suppress input transcription factor noise through distinct regulatory logic. eLife. (2020). doi: 10.7554/eLife.59351
  • L Li, Z Wunderlich. An Enhancer’s Length and Composition Are Shaped by Its Regulatory Task. Frontiers in Genetics. (2017).
 doi: 10.3389/fgene.2017.00063
  • Z Wunderlich, MDJ Bragdon, Ben J Vincent, Jonathan A White, Javier Estrada, AH DePace. Kruppel expression is conserved through compensatory evolution of shadow enhancers. Cell Reports. (2015). doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2015.08.021

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