About

Hi, my name is Siri and I am a plant evolutionary biologist at the Natural History Museum in Oslo. In my research, I aim to better understand the molecular basis of the processes generating plant diversity, like speciation and adaptation. I recently started a new group - this is our page!

Lab news

• October 31: New paper in Trends of Plant Science “An updated perspective: what genes make a tree a tree?” Link
• October 29: In memory of Richard Abbott: “Phylogeography of Arctic plants: where are we after 35 years, and where to go?” Link
• October 14: Congratulations to our new postdoc, Cassandra Elphinstone, for winning the audience prize for her presentation during the MSc, PhD, and postdoc days at the Natural History Museum!
• October 6: We are thrilled to welcome Cassandra Elphinstone, who is joining us during her NSERC postdoctoral fellowship! We look forward to working with you, Cassandra!
• September 25: This week we were very lucky to host Levi Yant! He gave a fascinating talk in our Tangled Bank seminar series entitled “A Polyploid Paradox: Might Polyploid Diversity Arise from Maladapted DNA Replication and Repair?” Thank you, Levi!
• September 15: We are very pleased to welcome Fenna Sondorp to the lab. Fenna is an intern from the Inholland University of Applied Sciences and will stay with us until May.
• July 29: Super happy to finally see our opinion piece on pathway convergence out in Trends in Genetics Link. Written together with colleague and friend, Peter Hoitinga.
• July 1: We are excited to announce an opening for a PhD Research Fellow in Plant Evolutionary Genomics. The position offers the opportunity to explore evolutionary processes in Arctic plants using experimental and population genomic approaches. Link
• June 30: Excited to share two new preprints: “1000 conifer genomes: Genome innovation, organisation and diversity” Link 🌲 and “Comparative regulomics provides novel insight into the evolution of wood formation across dicot and conifer trees” Link 🌳
• June 5: We were pleased to welcome Dr. Elizabeth Stunz from the University of Gothenburg for a visit to the lab. She delivered an excellent Tangled Bank Seminar titled “Landscape resistance and gene flow dynamics of widespread Arctic sedge and shrub species in Alaska, USA.”
• Februrary 25: New paper! “Moisture-responsive root-branching pathways identified in diverse maize breeding germplasm” is now published in Science! This is the result of a fun collaboration with the Dinneny lab at Stanford University. A big congrats to José Dinneny and lead author Johannes Scharwies! Link
• February 25: Visit from Assistant Professor Barnabas Daru, Stanford University. @Barnabas: Thank you so much for giving a very interesting workshop on “The Hidden Potential of Herbarium Specimens for Biogeography and Ecology” for us at the Natural History Museum in Oslo!
• February 25: We have two visitors to the group this spring: PhD student Tereza Koberová from the Kolář group in Prague, Czechia and postdoc Lucia Moreyra from the Susanna group at Institut Botànic de Barcelona, Spain - Welcome!
• August 24: Siri gave a presentation about the evolution of cacti to the Norwegian Botanical Association. Link
• July 24: New publication in collaboration with the Yant lab “Impact of whole-genome duplications on structural variant evolution in Cochlearia” out in Nature Communications Link Tremendous effort by Tuomas Hämälä!
• July 24: PhD student Lise Huseby had her first conference presentation at the XX International Botanical Congress this summer - Congratulations Lise!
• July 24: Lovisa Gustafsson gave a poster presentation of our new paper “How does selfing affect the pace and process of speciation?” at the XX International Botanical Congress in Madrid.
• April 24: New publication in collaboration with Alina Sartorius in the Quintana lab at UiO: “An evolutionary timeline of the oxytocin signaling pathway” is now out in Communications Biology. Link Congratulations, Alina!
• April 24: New publication: “How does selfing affect the pace and process of speciation?” is now out in Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology! Link
• April 24: I’m starting up the lab! :)