Background
Erives, Albert J. was born on March 4, 1972 in San Fernando, California, United States. Son of Adalberto Erives and Maria Guadalupe Ortega.
Erives, Albert J. was born on March 4, 1972 in San Fernando, California, United States. Son of Adalberto Erives and Maria Guadalupe Ortega.
Bachelor of Science, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, 1995. Doctor of Philosophy, University California Berkeley, 1999.
He is known for work at the intersection of genetics, evolution, developmental biology, and gene regulation. He has worked at the California Institute of Technology, University of California, Berkeley, and Dartmouth College, and is a professor at the University of Iowa. Inspired by results from Archaea genomics, Erives elaborated and described a specific stereochemical model of proto-anti-codon RNAs (pacRNAs).
The pacRNA model appears to predict the genetic code (ie the codon table) and biogenic amino acids.
In addition, Erives uses the pacRNA model to show that the origin of the genetic code is related to another fundamental unsolved problems in biology: the evolutionary origins of universal homochirality. The model strongly implies that early Ribonucleic acid world was immediately an aminoacylated Ribonucleic acid world and that proteinogenic amino acids arose because of this intrinsic relation between nucleotides and a limited set of "biogenic" amino acids.
The pacRNA model explicitly lists possible interactions between various anti-codon di-nucleotide and tri-nucleotide sequences and specific amino acids. When the nucleotides are Doctorate-ribose based, L-amino acids are preferred.
The pacRNA model may also explain why extant tRNAs are heavily modified in all three domains of life.
Erives first presented the pacRNA model at NASAs 2012 Astrobiology Science Conference and most recently at the 2013 Iowa City Darwin Day festival, which focused on the origins of life on Earth. Erives and colleagues determined how different morphogen gradient responses are encoded in deoxyribonucleic acid sequence. They did so by using diverse Drosophila species that have different sized eggs to study how a set of structured enhancers would have co-evolved or co-adapted to changes in the concentration gradients.
Morphogen gradient systems are a core fundamental subject of developmental biology.
Models of how morphogen gradient responses were encoded had previously been proposed but had not been tested at the genomic level nor across a set of functionally related enhancers. Two major unexpected findings resulted from this work.
The first result showed that different gradient responses were not encoded in transcription factor (TF) binding site quality or quantity (site density) as expected, but rather were encoded in the precise spacing between binding sites for the morphogen TF and its partner TF. The second result was necessary for arriving at the first result and showed that homotypic site clustering at the enhancers was a result of complex evolutionary history of selection for different threshold responses in the evolving insect egg rather than evidence of complex binding sites with unknown molecular functions. With his doctoral advisor Michael Levine, Erives authored several papers on ascidian developmental biology, with key insights into the evolution of the proto-vertebrate body plan.
Member of Genetics Society of America.
Married Lisa Karen Fleischer, December 27, 2008. Married Lisa Robin Girard, December 5, 1998 (divorced February 6, 2008). Children: Ezra James, Reuben Daniel.