Ehab Abouheif (born 28 July 1971 in

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple ...

, Canada), is a Canadian

biologist A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual Cell (biology), cell, a multicellular organism, or a Community (ecology), community of Biological inter ...

and Professor in the Department of Biology at

McGill University McGill University (french: link=no, Université McGill) is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous ...

. He is a specialist in integrating ecology, evolutionary, and developmental biology of ant societies in order to understand the origins and evolution of complex

biological system A biological system is a complex network which connects several biologically relevant entities. Biological organization spans several scales and are determined based different structures depending on what the system is. Examples of biological syst ...

s. He served as founding President of the Pan-American Society for Evolutionary Developmental Biology, as well as co-founder for the McGill Centre for Islam and Science.

Education

Abouheif completed his bachelor's degree (1993) and a Masters (1995) with Honors at Concordia University in Canada. In 2002 he received a PhD in Biology from Duke University. In 2002, he began postdoctoral studies at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

, completing it in 2003 at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. In 2004 Abouheif was appointed Assistant Professorship at

Canada Research Chair Canada Research Chair (CRC) is a title given to certain Canadian university research professors by the Canada Research Chairs Program. Program goals The Canada Research Chair program was established in 2000 as a part of the Government of Canada ...

(tier II) in Evolutionary Developmental Biology. Currently, he is a James McGill Professor in the Department of Biology at McGill University.

Research

His research on "supersoldier ants" made a breakthrough in 2012 and revealed the importance of ancestral genetic potentials, which are stored and lay dormant in the genome for millions of years in almost all organisms. Abouheif discovered that with the right environmental triggers these potentials can be released and converted to ancestral-like phenotypic variation. Once released, ancestral genetic potentials can then be harnessed by selection to promote adaptation and evolution. Currently, Abouheif is trying to uncover the molecular mechanisms for the storage and release of ancestral genetic potentials in biological systems, and is working to harness these potentials to advance animal/plant breeding, medicine, and biodiversity conservation.

Honors and service

Abouheif has been awarded national and international awards: the

Sloan Fellowship The Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation since 1955 to "provide support and recognition to early-career scientists and scholars". This program is one of the oldest of its kind in the United States. ...

(USA; 2006), the Steacie Fellowship (Canada; 2014), the Guggenheim Fellowship (USA; 2017), and was elected as a Member of the Royal Society of Canada (2016), the College of New Artists, Scholars and Scientists,. He served as founding President of the Pan-American Society for Evolutionary Developmental Biology, as well as co-founder for the McGill Centre for Islam and Science.

Selected publications

His most cited paper is "The evolution of transcriptional regulation in eukaryotes", cited 1027 times, according to Google Scholar. *Abouheif, E. 1997. Developmental Genetics and Homology: a hierarchical approach. Trends In Ecology and Evolution 12: 405-408 *Abouheif, E. Akam, M., Dickinson, W.J., Holland, P.W.H., Meyer, A., Patel, N.H., Roth, V.L. and Wray, G.A. 1997. Homology and Developmental Genes. Trends In Genetics 13:432-433 *Devised the 'Abouheif test’: Abouheif, E. 1999. A method for testing the assumption of phylogenetic independence in comparative data. Evolutionary Ecology Research 1: 895-909. *Abouheif, E. and Wray, G.A. 2002. Evolution of the gene network underlying the wing polyphenism in ants. Science 297: 249-252 *Khila, A. and E. Abouheif. 2008. Reproductive constraint is a developmental mechanism that maintains social harmony in ants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 105: 17884-17889. *Rajendhran Rajakumar, Diego San Mauro, Michiel B. Dijkstra, Ming H. Huang, Diana E. Wheeler, Francois Hiou-Tim, Abderrahman Khila, Michael Cournoyea, Ehab Abouheif. 2012. Ancestral Developmental Potential Facilitates Parallel Evolution in Ants. Science 335 (6064): 79-82. *Khila A, Abouheif E, and Rowe L. 2012. Function, developmental genetics, and fitness consequences of a sexually antagonistic trait. Science 336: 585-589 *Rajakumar, R. and Abouheif, E (2013) Ancestral developmental potential: a new tool for animal breeding? In N. O’Sullivan, M. Cooper, & F. Siewerdt (Eds.), Proceeding of the 62nd Annual National Breeders Roundtable. Paper presented at The 2013 National Breeders Roundtable, St. Louis, Missouri, 2–3 May (pp. 5–18). Tucker, GA: US Poultry & Egg. *Alvarado S, Rajakumar R, Abouheif E, Szyf M. 2015. Epigenetic variation in the Egfr gene generates quantitative variation in a complex trait in ants. Nature Communications 6 (6513): doi:10.1038/ncomms7513.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Abouheif, Ehab Canadian people of Egyptian descent Academic staff of McGill University 20th-century Canadian biologists Concordia University alumni Duke University Trinity College of Arts and Sciences alumni Living people 1971 births 21st-century Canadian biologists