10 Facts About Albert Erives

Albert Erives was born on March 4,1972 and is a developmental geneticist who studies transcriptional enhancers underlying animal development and diseases of development.

Albert Erives is known for work at the intersection of genetics, evolution, developmental biology, and gene regulation.

Albert Erives has worked at the California Institute of Technology, University of California, Berkeley, and Dartmouth College, and is an associate professor at the University of Iowa.

Albert Erives has shown how genes of the nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses inform on intermediate steps in the evolution of the linear, chromatinized eukaryotic chromosome and its mechanisms of gene regulation.

Correspondingly, Albert Erives lab has pioneered the identification of novel poly-glutamine complex recruiting enhancers that integrate developmental signals, while identifying polyQ allelic series for key developmental factors targeting those enhancers.

Albert Erives' work showed the existence of inherent spatial-temporal conflict in morphogenic responses and how this is handled in nature via complementary morphogenic gradients.

Albert 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.

In collaboration with Nori Satoh's lab at the University of Kyoto in Japan, where Albert Erives spent a winter doing research, they identified the largest collection of notochord specific genes by using genetically altered Ciona over-expressing the Brachyury transcription factor.

In 2001, Albert Erives co-founded the Caltech-associated company CodeGrok with Paul Mineiro, currently a Principal Research Software Developer for Microsoft.

Albert Erives took its name from the Robert Heinlein novel Stranger in a Strange Land and its concept of grok, which is to understand something deeply and intuitively, in reference to the goal of "grokking" the regulatory code of the human genome.