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Ola Gustafsson
"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” Theodosius Dobzhansky
Nature has always been a source of inspiration for me. With its beautiful, surprising and fascinating solutions, I early developed my passion for biology. Growing up in Bjärred only 10 km from Lund I spent most of my spare time by the river (Löddeå) fishing and philosophizing with friends.
As a PhD student in Lund Vision Group since 2006 I work with vertebrate eye evolution and vertebrate visual opsin evolution.
Early vertebrate evolution
Multifocal lenses are present in
freshwater and marine bony fishes, as well as amphibians, reptiles,
mammals and birds. In my research I found that even lampreys the most
basic extant vertebrates having well-developed eyes also possess
multifocal lenses. While multifocal lenses are an ancient characteristic
found in all vertebrate groups morphological aspects such as the lens
fiber cells differ considerably between the same groups. In my PhD
project basal vertebrate groups will be investigated both regarding
multifocal optics and eye morphology. Hopefully my research will
contribute to a deeper understanding of and a greater insight into the
vividly debated early evolution of vertebrates
Opsin evolution in vertebrates
For a photon to be detected and
transduced into cellular signals seven transmembrane-spanning opsin
proteins combined with a nonprotein retinal chromophore are used.
Another aspect of my research is to study the evolution of visual opsins
with bioinformatics. The main goal is to find out when opsins of
different wavelength sensitivity arose in the vertebrate evolution and
thereby also the possibility to colour vision. The main goal of the
research is to find out if colour vision in chordates was present before
a well developed eye were present.
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Publisher: Department of Biology
Last modified 16 Sep 2011
Ola Gustafsson
Email:
gustafsson.ola@gmail.com
Supervisor Ronald Kröger