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Welcome, Dr. Aaron Tarone!

August 7, 2009
by Rob Williams

As another fall semester dawns in less than three weeks, the Department welcomes Dr. Aaron Tarone to the faculty roster.

A native of Modesto, California, Tarone joined the Department August 1 as an assistant professor in molecular forensics. He most recently served as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Southern California in the laboratory of Sergey Nuzhdin.

While at the Nuzhdin lab, Tarone was involved in projects focused on research related to quantitative genetics, population genetics, and the genetics of speciation of Drosophila. In addition, members of the Nuzhdin lab work on a variety of other systems including pea aphids, butterflies, blowflies, leafhoppers, Arabidopsis and
Medicago.

While at the lab,  Tarone was involved with projects using microarray and resequencing analyses for DNA and RNA to answer questions about genetics. "Learning to analyze genomic data was an extremely rewarding accomplishment," he said.

Tarone also enjoyed working with Dr. Magnus Nordborg at USC. He said that Dr. Nordborg and his members helped him in his training of working with genome-wide association studies.

Tarone's research at Texas A&M will be focused on genomic studies of development and population biology in flies. To accomplish the goal, Tarone will be using basic biology approaches with two forensically important fly species, Lucilia sericata (common green bottle fly) and Chrysoma rufifacies (hairy maggot blow fly).

Tarone's lab also will take advantage the wealth of genetic and genomic tools available in Drosophila melanogaster to understand differences in development time and body size within and between populations of that species. Tarone will also be determining how genetic variation in the network of genes regulating yolk protein expressions affects yolk protein levels and related phenotypes with Drosophila melanogaster.

Starting in the spring, Tarone will also be teaching three undergraduate courses: the Science of Forensic Entomology (FIVS 431) and Applied Forensic Entomology courses (FIVS 432), and Case Studies in Problem Solving course (FIVS 435).

"I am excited about joining the Department," he said. "My interactions with faculty, staff and students have been great. On the research side, TAMU Entomology seems to have brought together a great group of talented faculty and I look forward to my interactions within the department and with other biologists on campus."

Tarone is also impressed with the quality of students, resources and research environment the Department has.

"I look forward to my arrival at this quality research environment with a great deal of optimism for the future of my research," he said. "On the academic side, all of my interactions with the students of the department have been positive. I see a lot of potential in the students I've met so far."

Tarone received his Ph.D. in the department of zoology from Michigan State University and his Bachelor of Science in genetics from the University of California-Davis.