DrMichalis Barkoulas

Over the last 20 years, I have been working on fundamental questions that relate to the complex relationship between genotype and phenotype. First, during my PhD and post-doctoral studies at the University of Oxford, I focused on plant leaf development and provided genetic evidence for a role for auxin gradients in sculpting the dissected leaf shape. Then, during my postdoctoral training at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, I was introduced to C. elegans, a key model system in the study of signalling networks in development. A highlight of my work was a quantitative analysis leading to a phase map of cell fate patterns as a function of EGF and Notch dosage.

I was recruited as a Lecturer in 2014 to start my own lab in the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London, where I am now employed as a Reader. A key approach that my team has pursued over the years is to perturb the reproducibility of C. elegans development by introducing random mutations and then study how phenotypic variability emerges within an isogenic population. This work unravelled genes buffering phenotypic variance, which is central to biological system design and evolution, and characterised the resilience of epidermal cell fate patterning in response to changes in temperature and the genetic background. More recently, we started investigating some natural infections of C. elegans by oomycetes, which are fungal-like in morphology but constitute an evolutionary distinct group of eukaryotic pathogens.

I have successfully led a range of prestigious, externally funded research projects in these areas, supported by UK and EU institutions such as BBSRC, Leverhulme Trust, the Royal Society, Wellcome Trust and ERC. I have overseen the training and supervision of 8 post-doctoral researchers, 10 PhD students, and over 90 undergraduate and Master’s students in my lab.