About

Corlett Wolfe Wood is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is an evolutionary biologist interested in the evolutionary ecology and evolutionary genetics of species interactions. Her research explores the evolutionary ecology and genetics of species interactions, primarily between plants and microbes, using approaches such as greenhouse experiments, fieldwork in wild populations, and genomics. She aims to understand how mutualisms are maintained and disrupted, and her work involves studying the influence of parasite behavior on plant-microbe symbiosis and mechanisms of mutualism disruption by parasitic nematodes. Corlett is committed to fostering a welcoming and supportive research environment, emphasizing the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in science.

Research topics

• Biology
• Evolutionary biology
• Computer Science
• Genetics
• Data science
• Computational biology
• Engineering
• Epistemology
• Management science
• Philosophy
• Ecology

Selected publications

• Priority effects transcend scales and disciplines in biology

  Trends in Ecology & Evolution · 2024 · 56 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Data science
  • Biology
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Giant <i>Starship</i> Elements Mobilize Accessory Genes in Fungal Genomes

  Molecular Biology and Evolution · 2022 · 116 citations

  • Biology
  • Evolutionary biology
  • Genetics

  Accessory genes are variably present among members of a species and are a reservoir of adaptive functions. In bacteria, differences in gene distributions among individuals largely result from mobile elements that acquire and disperse accessory genes as cargo. In contrast, the impact of cargo-carrying elements on eukaryotic evolution remains largely unknown. Here, we show that variation in genome content within multiple fungal species is facilitated by Starships, a newly discovered group of massive mobile elements that are 110 kb long on average, share conserved components, and carry diverse arrays of accessory genes. We identified hundreds of Starship-like regions across every major class of filamentous Ascomycetes, including 28 distinct Starships that range from 27 to 393 kb and last shared a common ancestor ca. 400 Ma. Using new long-read assemblies of the plant pathogen Macrophomina phaseolina, we characterize four additional Starships whose activities contribute to standing variation in genome structure and content. One of these elements, Voyager, inserts into 5S rDNA and contains a candidate virulence factor whose increasing copy number has contrasting associations with pathogenic and saprophytic growth, suggesting Voyager's activity underlies an ecological trade-off. We propose that Starships are eukaryotic analogs of bacterial integrative and conjugative elements based on parallels between their conserved components and may therefore represent the first dedicated agents of active gene transfer in eukaryotes. Our results suggest that Starships have shaped the content and structure of fungal genomes for millions of years and reveal a new concerted route for evolution throughout an entire eukaryotic phylum.

  DOI

• The Evolutionary Forces Shaping Cis- and Trans-Regulation of Gene Expression within a Population of Outcrossing Plants

  Molecular Biology and Evolution · 2020 · 24 citations

  • Biology
  • Genetics
  • Evolutionary biology

  Understanding the persistence of genetic variation within populations has long been a goal of evolutionary biology. One promising route toward achieving this goal is using population genetic approaches to describe how selection acts on the loci associated with trait variation. Gene expression provides a model trait for addressing the challenge of the maintenance of variation because it can be measured genome-wide without information about how gene expression affects traits. Previous work has shown that loci affecting the expression of nearby genes (local or cis-eQTLs) are under negative selection, but we lack a clear understanding of the selective forces acting on variants that affect the expression of genes in trans. Here, we identify loci that affect gene expression in trans using genomic and transcriptomic data from one population of the obligately outcrossing plant, Capsella grandiflora. The allele frequencies of trans-eQTLs are consistent with stronger negative selection acting on trans-eQTLs than cis-eQTLs, and stronger negative selection acting on trans-eQTLs associated with the expression of multiple genes. However, despite this general pattern, we still observe the presence of a trans-eQTL at intermediate frequency that affects the expression of a large number of genes in the same coexpression module. Overall, our work highlights the different selective pressures shaping variation in cis- and trans-regulation.

  DOI

Frequent coauthors

• Emile Gluck‐Thaler

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  12 shared

• Edmund D. Brodie

  National Institutes of Health

  11 shared

• Vincent A. Formica

  University of North Carolina at Pembroke

  10 shared

• Malcolm E. Augat

  McCormick (United States)

  8 shared

• Steven T. Cassidy

  University of Florida

  8 shared

• Shaniya H. Markalanda

  University of Pittsburgh

  6 shared

• Connor J. McFadden

  University of Pittsburgh

  6 shared

• R. Eileen Butterfield

  6 shared

Labs

• Wood LabPI

Similar researchers at University of Pennsylvania

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• Craig B. Thompsonh-277
• Daniel J Raderh-236
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• M. Celeste Simonh-185