Mark Siegal

Mark Siegal is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology and Center for Genomics and Systems Biology at New York University. Dr. Siegal received his Ph.D. in 1998 from Harvard University. Advised by Daniel Hartl, he developed novel transgenic methods for performing evolutionary comparisons of gene function in flies. From 1998 to 2004, Dr. Siegal was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, advised by Bruce Baker. There he studied sexual development in flies as a model for how developmental pathways evolve. At Stanford he also collaborated with Aviv Bergman on the theory of developmental evolution, in particular the causes and effects of robustness in regulatory networks. This work was inspired to a great degree by Waddington's concept of the epigenetic landscape. In 2005, Dr. Siegal joined NYU, where he continues to use a variety of experimental and computational approaches to understand the sources and consequences of variation in complex regulatory systems.

Dr. Siegal's current research uses Saccharomyces cerevisiae to study how environmental and genetic variation impact phenotypic variation. His lab has identified hundreds of genes that buffer non-genetic sources of variation to maintain robustness of yeast-cell morphology. His lab has also identified a novel "bet hedging" strategy in yeast, whereby genetically identical cells adopt different growth states that increase population fitness in a variable environment. This work has implications not only for understanding ecological adaptation but also for understanding the role of cellular heterogeneity in human diseases, including microbial infections and cancer.