Regular biography
Jennifer Jo Wernegreen is an Associate Professor of Environmental and Evolutionary Genomics in the Division of Environmental Natural Sciences at Duke University. Her research focuses on environmental and evolutionary genomics, primarily in bacteria, with an emphasis on understanding mechanisms shaping genetic and functional variation in microbes. Her work integrates evolutionary, population genetic, computational, and molecular approaches to explore how bacterial genomes change over time, particularly in the context of ecological interactions such as symbiosis. She is also interested in how genomic alterations impact microbial functions and interactions, using mutualistic microbes, including bacteria that supply essential nutrients to invertebrate hosts, as models.