Standring Lab

Polyploid Cells, Evolution, and Faith in Dr. Standring’s Lab

Following her PhD thesis studying assassin bugs, Dr. Sam Standring started her postdoctoral work at BYU with Professor Paul Frandsen extracting silk genes from different butterfly species. In this process, she and another team member realized the sequencing was taking longer because the cell was polyploid, meaning it contained more than two sets of chromosomes. Now as a faculty member in the Department of Plant and Wildlife Sciences, Standring hopes to continue researching these complex cells to understand their impact on insect evolution