Hopi Hoekstra

Danielle "Hopi" Elizabeth Hoekstra (born 1972) is an evolutionary biologist working at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her lab uses natural populations of rodents to study the genetic basis of adaptation.[1][2][3][4] She is the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University. 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.[1] In 2016, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences,[5] and in 2017, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[6]

Hopi Hoekstra
BornJuly 11, 1972
AwardsNational Academy of Sciences (2016)
Richard Lounsbery Award (2015)
Scientific career
FieldsEvolutionary biology
Development
Genetics
Neurobiology

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] Hoekstra attended a high school near Palo Alto, California.[2] She chose to attend college at the University of California, Berkeley, where she initially intended to study political science. She chose the university because she wanted to play volleyball, which she did for two years.[2] 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 cockroach locomotion.[2]

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.[1] 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.[1][2] She is a member of the advisory board for Current Biology.[7]

Research

Hoekstra is best known for studying the genetic mechanisms that influence the evolution of highly complex natural behaviors.[8] 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.[8][2] 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.[8] Students in her lab have also studied the connections between digging behavior and the neurobiology of reward.[8]

She has also studied the evolution of the color of mice coats and its significance for adaptation.[2] 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."[3] 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."[3] Her work supports the hypothesis that evolution can occur through incremental changes.[4] Recently, Hoekstra has found evidence linking the mutation the Agouti gene to survival in mice. 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.[9]

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
  • Linnen, C.R.; Poh, Y.-P.; Peterson, B.K.; Barrett, R.D.H.; Larson, J.G; Jensen, J.; Hoekstra, H.E. (2013). "Adaptive evolution of multiple traits through multiple mutations at a single gene". Science. 339 (6125): 1312–1316. Bibcode:2013Sci...339.1312L. doi:10.1126/science.1233213. PMC 3836219. PMID 23493712.
  • Weber, J.N.; Peterson, B.K.; Hoekstra, H.E. (2013). "Discrete genetic modules are responsible for the evolution of complex burrowing behaviour in deer mice". Nature. 493 (7432): 4202–405. doi:10.1038/nature11816. PMID 23325221. S2CID 4361153.
  • Fisher, H.S.; Hoekstra, H.E. (2010). "Competition drives cooperation among closely-related sperm of deer mice". Nature. 463 (7282): 801–803. Bibcode:2010Natur.463..801F. doi:10.1038/nature08736. PMC 2824558. PMID 20090679.
  • Hoekstra, Hopi E.; Hirschmann, Rachel J.; Bundey, Richard A.; Insel, Paul A.; Crossland, Janet P. (2006). "A single amino acid mutation contributes to adaptive beach mouse color pattern". Science. 313 (5783): 101–104. Bibcode:2006Sci...313..101H. doi:10.1126/science.1126121. PMID 16825572. S2CID 33376626.
  • Nachman, M.W.; Hoekstra, H.E.; D'Agostino, S. L. (2003). "The genetic basis of adaptive melanism in pocket mice" (PDF). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 100 (9): 5268–5273. Bibcode:2003PNAS..100.5268N. doi:10.1073/pnas.0431157100. PMC 154334. PMID 12704245.

References
  1. "Hoekstra Lab". hoekstra.oeb.harvard.edu. Archived from the original on 2016-04-20. Retrieved 2016-04-25.
  2. Gorman, James (28 January 2013). "Digging Deep in the DNA". The New York Times. Retrieved 26 December 2015.
  3. "One gene, many mutations: Key that controls coat color in mice evolved nine times". Harvard University. Science Daily. 14 March 2013. Retrieved 26 December 2015.
  4. Nair, Prashant (9 June 2015). "QnAs with Hopi Hoekstra" (PDF). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 112 (23): 7107–7108. Bibcode:2015PNAS..112.7107N. doi:10.1073/pnas.1508757112. PMC 4466722. PMID 26039996. Retrieved 26 December 2015.
  5. "May 3, 2016: NAS Members and Foreign Associates Elected". www.nasonline.org. Archived from the original on May 6, 2016. Retrieved 2016-05-03.
  6. "American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2017 FELLOWS AND FOREIGN HONORARY MEMBERS WITH THEIR AFFILIATIONS AT THE TIME OF ELECTION". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved 2016-05-03.
  7. "Advisory Board". www.cell.com.
  8. Gorman, James (16 January 2013). "Study Discovers DNA That Tells Mice How to Construct Their Homes". The New York Times. Retrieved 28 December 2015.
  9. "The Wild Experiment That Showed Evolution in Real Time". The Atlantic. January 13, 2019. Retrieved 18 September 2020.
  10. "2019 MERRIAM AWARD - HOPI HOEKSTRA". The American Society of Mammalogists. September 18, 2019. Retrieved 18 September 2020.
  11. "Election of New Members at the 2018 Spring Meeting". American Philosophical Society. April 28, 2018. Retrieved 1 August 2018.
  12. "Hopi Hoekstra". Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation. Archived from the original on 1 August 2018. Retrieved 1 August 2018.
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