The focus of my lab can be broadly described as plant evolutionary developmental genetics, but our work touches on many fields, from systematics to proteonomics. In general, we are interested in the genetic basis of evolutionary change, particularly in relation to flower development.

Currently, much of work is concentrated on the MADS-box genes, a large family of transcription factors which play critical roles in many aspects of plant development. We are studying this family from many perspectives, including patterns of gene duplication, trends in sequence evolution, changes in gene regulation, and evolution of protein dimerization specificity.