Angus Davison

In my research, I use snails to understand evolutionary and developmental genetics. New DNA sequencing techniques are enabling us to do what was not possible only a few years ago.

In a recent breakthrough, we showed that variation in a cell-scaffolding protein is linked to symmetry-breaking in the pond snail, creating either right- or left-coiling snails. Subsequent efforts to further develop the research ended up in a world-wide quest to find a mate for a very rare left-coiling snail, which we called "Jeremy". This helped communicate my science, and also led, on a winding path, to a British Science Association media fellowship at the BBC in 2018.