My name is Bianca Sacchi, I am a PhD candidate in the Wright lab at U of T EEB.
- 🌱 My current research focus is Y chromosome degeneration and silencing in plants with very young sex chromosomes
- 🧬 I love working with non-model genomes, learning new coding and bioinformatics skills, and diving into data (from frustrating data wrangling to genome visualization)
- 💻 These days I'm working on my remaining thesis projects and learning about industry and government research careers
- 🤠 When I'm not troubleshooting code or reading papers you can find me bird watching 🦆, rock climbing 🧗♀️, or hanging out with my cat Edgar 🐈
- Extensive rearrangement and ~30% Y gene loss in a <10 MYA sex chromosome
- Presenting a complete, haplotype-level assembly of a species with two Y chromosomes
- Collaboration with Zoë Humphries (TE expert)
Early regulatory evolution contributes to Y chromosome degeneration in Rumex hastatulus - preprint coming soon
- Widespread pattern of decreased Y expression relative to X expression (between gametologs)
- Increased nonsynonymous substitution rate in genes with lower Y expression
- No evidence of dosage compensation between sexes among X-linked hemizygous and silenced genes
Functional gene evolution on the Y chromosomes of Rumex hastatulus - in progress