Julianne N. Peláez
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Education
- University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D. candidate in Integrative Biology, September 2016 - present
- Harvard University, B.A. in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Minor in Environmental Science and Public Policy, 2009-2013
Employment
- Harvard University, Research Assistant, 2013-2015
- Museum of Comparative Zoology, Entomology Collections, Curatorial Assistant, 2014-2015
- Indigo Agriculture, Research Assistant, 2015-2016
Research Interests
Insect-plant interactions, chemosensory evolution, behavior, genetics & genomics.
How I got into science
Growing up, my mother told me stories of her childhood, farming and foraging in the rural mountainsides of South Korea. She collected meaty mushrooms, persimmons, and wild berries, ate roasted grasshoppers and boiled silkworms, scraped and chewed on the cambium of pine trees, and hunted pheasants and rabbits. I developed a love for the outdoors and romanticized the natural world. And despite growing up in the industrial wasteland of New Jersey, I nonetheless found adventure in the small creeks and abandoned lots of my city, with great thanks to environmental clubs at my high school, and a curiosity to find life even in neglected places.
With an interest in biology, I used to my time as an undergrad at at Harvard to explore the seemingly endless opportunities to expand my understanding of organisms, ecosystems, and evolutionary theories, and to travel across the globe to places rich in biodiversity, from Costa Rica and Mexico to Kenya and Australia. A study abroad experience in Costa Rica with the Organization for Tropical Studies piqued my interest in studying insects, with every day offering new encounters with colorful characters: the terrors of bullet ants roaming the classrooms, moths littering our windows in the night, and katydids routinely flying in my face. These experiences propelled me to join the lab of Dr. Naomi Piece, where I spent a number of years during and after college, studying interspecific interactions. While I was privileged to work on a diverse array of projects (documenting myrmecophilous arthropod communities; looking at chemical manipulation between lycaenid caterpillars and their ant associates; investigating spectral properties of butterfly wings; and more!), I was most invested in a project looking at the nature of ant-plant mutualisms. In these mutualisms, plants provide housing and food to their ant partners, in exchange for protection from the ants against herbivorous insects and mammalian grazers. One plant species may interact with multiple ant species, each of which may offer varying levels of protection. Thus, we were interested in investigating whether chemical compounds released or deposited by different ant species could influence the plants' investment in the ants. What I learned most from working in the Pierce Lab was an appreciation for the ecological context of a species, and how long-term, multi-party systems can influence adaptations in unexpected ways.
What followed was a year at an agricultural biotech start-up in Boston (Indigo Agriculture), where I helped in the development and production of bacterial and fungal seed coats to increase crop yields (corn, soy, wheat). I learned what it really meant to work collaboratively for a common goal, and that more workplaces should offer free snacks and meals to incentivize their team members (it worked exceedingly well on me!).
With an interest in biology, I used to my time as an undergrad at at Harvard to explore the seemingly endless opportunities to expand my understanding of organisms, ecosystems, and evolutionary theories, and to travel across the globe to places rich in biodiversity, from Costa Rica and Mexico to Kenya and Australia. A study abroad experience in Costa Rica with the Organization for Tropical Studies piqued my interest in studying insects, with every day offering new encounters with colorful characters: the terrors of bullet ants roaming the classrooms, moths littering our windows in the night, and katydids routinely flying in my face. These experiences propelled me to join the lab of Dr. Naomi Piece, where I spent a number of years during and after college, studying interspecific interactions. While I was privileged to work on a diverse array of projects (documenting myrmecophilous arthropod communities; looking at chemical manipulation between lycaenid caterpillars and their ant associates; investigating spectral properties of butterfly wings; and more!), I was most invested in a project looking at the nature of ant-plant mutualisms. In these mutualisms, plants provide housing and food to their ant partners, in exchange for protection from the ants against herbivorous insects and mammalian grazers. One plant species may interact with multiple ant species, each of which may offer varying levels of protection. Thus, we were interested in investigating whether chemical compounds released or deposited by different ant species could influence the plants' investment in the ants. What I learned most from working in the Pierce Lab was an appreciation for the ecological context of a species, and how long-term, multi-party systems can influence adaptations in unexpected ways.
What followed was a year at an agricultural biotech start-up in Boston (Indigo Agriculture), where I helped in the development and production of bacterial and fungal seed coats to increase crop yields (corn, soy, wheat). I learned what it really meant to work collaboratively for a common goal, and that more workplaces should offer free snacks and meals to incentivize their team members (it worked exceedingly well on me!).
Current Research Interests
Here at UC Berkeley, I find myself again in a small creek, this time Strawberry Creek, which runs through campus, and in search of herbivorous drosophilids and their non-herbivorous relatives. I am interested in understanding how sensory systems of insects evolve and enable previously microbe-feeding insects to detect and accept living plants as a new food source. Evolving completely new and distinct dietary preferences poses a serious challenge for non-herbivorous insects, but mounting evidence from the last decade has suggested that large gene families of chemoreceptors expressed in the peripheral nervous system are evolving rapidly across ecologically divergent species, namely through gene duplications, pseudogenizations, losses, and protein coding changes. Focusing on the gustatory system (taste or contact chemosensation), I am using a variety of methods -- comparative genomics, functional genetics, and behavioral experimentation -- to understand the role of these genetic changes in driving new gustatory preferences.
Non-science interests
I am unapologetically into juicing, bullet journaling, dog walking, sticker making, cooking with my mother, and playing fetch with my cat.
Honors and Awards
- Sigma Xi, Grants in Aid of Research
- Society for the Study of Evolution, Graduate Research Excellent Grant – Rosemary Grant Advanced award (GREG-RGA)
- National Science Fountation, Graduate Research Fellowship Program, 2018
- UC Berkeley, Mentored Research Award, 2018
- UC Berkeley, Outstanding GSI Award, 2018
Publications
- Gloss, A. D., Dittrich, A. C. N., Lapoint, R. T., Goldman-Huertas, B., Verster, K. I., Pelaez, J. L., ... & Groen, S. C. (2019). Evolution of herbivory remodels a Drosophila genome. bioRxiv, 767160.
- Karageorgi, M., Groen, S. C., Sumbul, F., Pelaez, J. N., Verster, K. I., Aguilar, J. M., ... & Guerra, G. (2019). Genome editing retraces the evolution of toxin resistance in the monarch butterfly. Nature, 574(7778), 409-412.
- Boyle, J. H., Martins, D. J., Pelaez, J., Musili, P. M., Kibet, S., Ndung'u, S. K., ... & Pierce, N. E. (2018). Polygyny does not explain the superior competitive ability of dominant ant associates in the African ant‐plant, Acacia (Vachellia) drepanolobium. Ecology and evolution, 8(3), 1441-1450.
Chicago - Baker, C. C., Martins, D. J., Pelaez, J. N., Billen, J. P., Pringle, A., Frederickson, M. E., & Pierce, N. E. (2017). Distinctive fungal communities in an obligate African ant-plant mutualism. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 284(1850), 20162501.
- Ambrose, K. V., Boghigian, B. A., Djonovic, S. Gray, P. A., Toledo, G. V., Marquez, L. M, Pelaez, J. N., and von Maltzahn, G. "Designed complex endophyte compositions and methods for improved plant traits." U.S. Patent 10,212,944, issued February 26, 2019.