Hopi Hoekstra Explained

Hopi Hoekstra
Office1:Dean of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Term Start1:August 1, 2023
Predecessor1:Claudine Gay
Birth Date:July 1972
Awards:National Academy of Sciences (2016)
Richard Lounsbery Award (2015)
C. Hart Merriam Award (2019)

Danielle "Hopi" Elisabeth Hoekstra (born 1972) is an evolutionary biologist working at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts and serving as the Dean of its Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Her lab uses natural populations of rodents to study the genetic basis of adaptation.[1] [2] [3] [4] She is the C.Y. Chan Professor of Arts and Sciences and the Xiaomeng Tong and Yu Chen Professor of Life Sciences in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University.[5] She is also the Curator of Mammals at the Museum of Comparative Zoology and a Harvard College Professor. In 2014, Hoekstra became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. In 2016, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences,[6] and in 2017, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[7] Hoekstra became the Edgerley Family Dean of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences in August 2023.[8]

Early life

Hoekstra was born to a family of Dutch ancestry. Hoekstra's first name "Hopi" is derived from a Dutch term of endearment.[2] [9] Hoekstra attended Los Altos High School in California. She attended college at the University of California, Berkeley, where she initially intended to study political science. She has stated that at one point she wanted to become the U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, but she was drawn into biology by a class on biomechanics taught by Robert J. Full. She went on to work in Full's lab, studying studying the biomechanics of animal locomotion.[2] One factor for choosing UC Berkeley was that she wanted to play Pac10 volleyball, which she did for two years.

Career

Hoekstra received her B.A. in Integrative Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. Before her graduate studies, she researched grizzly bears for a year in Yellowstone National Park. She obtained her Ph.D. in Zoology as a Howard Hughes Predoctoral Fellow at the University of Washington. For her postdoctoral work, she studied the genetic basis of adaptive melanism in pocket mice at the University of Arizona. In 2003, she became an assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego. In 2007, she moved to Harvard University, where she received tenure in 2010.[2] She has served on the advisory board of several foundations (e.g. Searle Scholars Program, Max Plank Society), magazines (Scientific American, Quanta) and journals (PNAS, Current Biology, PLoS Genetics, Development, bioRxiv). In June 2023, she was named as the Dean of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, succeeding Claudine Gay, who had assumed the University's presidency a month prior.[10] Hoekstra assumed office on August 1, 2023.

Research

Hoekstra spent her scientific career working to understand the fundamental processes by which organisms, including humans, differ in the natural world. She capitalizes on natural variation in non-traditional model organisms, most notably the deer mouse, a system she pioneered.[11] Her work is characterized by its an interdisciplinary approach, utilizing both field and lab experiments. Her laboratory’s overarching research strategy is to use tools from genetics, development and neuroscience to discover novel mechanisms by which evolution shapes biodiversity and, conversely, to use biodiversity as a tool to reveal general principles in biology.

Based on this work, she has been featured in National Geographic[12] and profiled in the New York Times.[13]

Behavioral Genetics

Hoekstra is best known for studying the genetic mechanisms that influence the evolution of highly complex natural behaviors.[14] In 2013, Hoekstra published an article in the journal Nature on the genetics of burrowing behavior in two sister species of Peromyscus mice; the oldfield mouse (P. polionotus), which builds elaborate burrows complete with an escape tunnel, and the deer mouse (P. maniculatis), which builds a simple and shallow nest. Using a combination of behavioral assays and classical genetic strategies, Hoekstra and her students identified four regions of DNA which control the length of the tunnels dug by the mice. Trainees in her lab have also identified a specific gene that affects parental behavior[15] and also are genetically dissecting variation in other behaviors such as vocalization and skilled motor behavior.

Color Adaptation

Hoekstra started her career studying the evolution of mouse fur color and its significance for adaptation. She was among the first to identify a specific DNA mutation and directly link it to fitness in the wild, a result found in many modern textbooks. In 2013, her team published an article in the journal Science, describing how coat color in mice was controlled by nine separate mutations within a single gene, named "agouti." Speaking about this discovery, Hoekstra said, "The question has always been whether evolution is dominated by these big leaps or smaller steps. When we first implicated the agouti gene, we could have stopped there and concluded that evolution takes these big steps as only one major gene was involved, but that would have been wrong. When we looked more closely, within this gene, we found that even within this single locus, there are, in fact, many small steps." Her work supports the hypothesis that evolution can occur through incremental changes. Recently, Hoekstra has found evidence linking the mutation the Agouti gene to survival in mice.[16] More specifically, the study showed how a sequence variant in the Agouti gene changes the phenotype and then linked those changes to changes in population allele frequency, demonstrating evolution of trait by natural selection.[17] More recently, her lab has discovered the developmental origins of complex color patterns.[18]

Honors and awards

Family

Hoekstra lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her son and her husband, James Mallet. Mallet is also an evolutionary biologist at Harvard.[2]

Selected publications

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Hoekstra Lab. hoekstra.oeb.harvard.edu. 2016-04-25. https://web.archive.org/web/20160420065806/http://hoekstra.oeb.harvard.edu/home. 2016-04-20. dead.
  2. News: Gorman. James. Digging Deep in the DNA. 26 December 2015. The New York Times. 28 January 2013.
  3. News: One gene, many mutations: Key that controls coat color in mice evolved nine times. 26 December 2015. Harvard University. Science Daily. 14 March 2013.
  4. Nair. Prashant. QnAs with Hopi Hoekstra. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 9 June 2015. 112. 23. 7107–7108. 26 December 2015. 10.1073/pnas.1508757112. 26039996. 4466722. 2015PNAS..112.7107N. free.
  5. Web site: Hopi E. Hoekstra . 2023-11-13 . oeb.harvard.edu . en.
  6. Web site: May 3, 2016: NAS Members and Foreign Associates Elected. www.nasonline.org. 2016-05-03. https://web.archive.org/web/20160506052951/http://www.nasonline.org/news-and-multimedia/news/may-3-2016-NAS-Election.html. May 6, 2016. dead.
  7. Web site: American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2017 Fellows and Foreign Honorary Members With Their Affiliation at the Time of Election. www.nasonline.org. 2016-05-03.
  8. Web site: Rosenberg . John . June 26, 2023 . Hopi Hoekstra Appointed Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean . Harvard Magazine.
  9. April 13, 2010 . Hopi Hoekstra . Current Biology . 20 . 7 . PR305–R306.
  10. Web site: Harvard taps Hopi Hoekstra, 'pathbreaking scholar' and life scientist, as next dean of Faculty of Arts and Sciences - the Boston Globe . .
  11. News: Gorman . James . 2013-01-28 . Hide and Seek With Deer Mice . 2024-03-06 . The New York Times . en-US . 0362-4331.
  12. Web site: 2009-02-01 . Modern Darwins . 2024-03-06 . Magazine . en.
  13. News: Gorman . James . 2013-01-28 . Digging Deep in the DNA . 2024-03-06 . The New York Times . en-US . 0362-4331.
  14. News: Gorman. James. Study Discovers DNA That Tells Mice How to Construct Their Homes. 28 December 2015. The New York Times. 16 January 2013.
  15. News: Zimmer . Carl . 2017-04-19 . Why Are Some Mice (and People) Monogamous? A Study Points to Genes . 2024-03-06 . The New York Times . en-US . 0362-4331.
  16. Web site: Yong . Ed . 2019-01-31 . The Wild Experiment That Showed Evolution in Real Time . 2024-03-06 . The Atlantic . en.
  17. News: Rosner . Hillary . 2011-08-08 . A Colorful Way to Watch Evolution in Nebraska’s Sand Dunes . 2024-03-06 . The New York Times . en-US . 0362-4331.
  18. Web site: Yong . Ed . 2016-11-02 . How the Mouse Got Its Stripes . 2024-03-06 . The Atlantic . en.
  19. Web site: Announcing the 2022 Lowell Thomas Awardees . 23 August 2022 .
  20. Web site: Hellmiss . Renate . 2022-02-03 . Hopi Hoekstra Named as a 2021 AAAS Fellow . 2024-03-06 . Harvard University - Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology . en-US.
  21. Web site: 2019 Merriam Award – Hopi Hoekstra. The American Society of Mammalogists . 18 September 2020. September 18, 2019.
  22. Web site: Election of New Members at the 2018 Spring Meeting . American Philosophical Society . 1 August 2018. April 28, 2018.
  23. Web site: 2023-11-13 . Hopi E. Hoekstra . 2023-11-13 . American Academy of Arts & Sciences . en.
  24. Web site: Hopi E. Hoekstra . 2023-11-13 . www.nasonline.org.
  25. Web site: Richard Lounsbery Award . 2023-11-13 . www.nasonline.org.
  26. Web site: Hopi Hoekstra . Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation . 1 August 2018 . https://web.archive.org/web/20180801221136/http://www.beckman-foundation.org/beckman-young-investigators/hopi-hoekstra . 1 August 2018 . dead .
  27. Web site: Awards . 2023-11-13 . www.amnat.org . en.
  28. Web site: Ernst Mayr Award. www.systbio.org . 6 January 2021 .

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