Some Current Research Projects
As part of the Protostome Tree of Life Project Casey is working to infer the relationships between the major groups of animals using molecular sequence data from many genes collected from many taxa. Original data are collected as Expressed Sequence Tags (ESTs) rather than by directed PCR. Much of the effort on this project has been devoted to developing tools that identify orthologous genes across genomic and EST datasets and then remove genes with paralogy problems. This project is highly computationally intensive, and involves bioinformatic, phylogenetic, and molecular tools.
The siphonophores are the most complex of all colonial animals (visit www.siphonophores.org for more information about them). We are interested in all aspects of siphonophore biology, and are actively working to better infer the phylogeny of the group and understand its diversity (both through the description of new species and improved descriptions of already known taxa).
Casey has described the budding process that gives rise to the unique colony-level organization of a diversity of siphonophore species. We are continuing this comparative work, and also investigating the colony-level development of the siphonophore Nanomia bijuga from functional, histological, and molecular perspectives.
We are describing various aspects of the embryonic development of the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis from functional and molecular points of view. We are particularly interested in the establishment of the primary body axes and the segregation of the germ line.
Casey is a participant in the Cnidarian Tree of Life Project. He is coordinating the bioinformatics component of the project.