Hoxful Monsters

Sean Carroll, a name which needs no introduction in the field of evo devo.Recently PLos genetics published an interview with Sean B Carroll ,where he talks about his journey beginning from the lab of Matt Scott to a scientist and writer of evolution.

Gitschier: Were you the first person in Matt’s lab?

Carroll: Allen Laughon and I were there for day one in Boulder. Allen came from Ray Gesteland’s [lab] in Utah. We took over a lab from a microbiologist, and Boulder hadn’t bothered to clean it. So Al and I spent the first few days emptying reagents from old bottles and re-filling them with new ones.

We had a DNA map of the Antennapedia complex. The whole region, a few hundred kb, was cloned. Breakpoints of scr [sex-combs reduced] and ftz mutants were mapped.

I had an immunochemistry background, so I had a lot of experience in producing, purifying, and using antibodies. So I had something to bring to the table, but I had never worked on flies. The idea was to localize these gene products during development.

Read the entire interview here

Citation: Gitschier J (2008) Curling Up with a Story: An Interview with Sean Carroll. PLoS Genet 4(10): e1000229. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1000229