Malik Lab's Bayes wins molecular evolution award

Joshua Bayes of the joint Hutchinson Center/University of Washington Molecular and Cellular Biology Program has won the Walter M. Fitch Student Award. The award, which includes a $1,500 prize, recognizes the best graduate student presentation given during a special plenary session at the Annual Meeting for the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution.

Bayes, who is carrying out his doctoral thesis research in Dr. Harmit Malik’s lab in the Basic Sciences Division, is studying the molecular basis of speciation—or how one species splits into two—in the fruit fly Drosophila. He was among eight finalists selected to present at the symposium, which has provided a forum for young investigators to showcase exemplary research since the society’s first annual meeting in 1993.

“It was already such an honor to be part of the Fitch symposium, which brought together an exceptional group of students speaking on a wide range of evolutionary topics,” Bayes said. “To be a graduate student and have the culmination of my thesis work recognized was truly beyond my expectations.”

In his talk on “The Molecular Basis of Hybrid Sterility Caused by the Hybrid Sterility,” Bayes presented his finding that implicates rapid evolution of satellite-DNA as one of the earliest events in inter-species divergence.