B.A., Biology. College of the Holy Cross. Worcester MA, USA.

Emily is interested in the evolution of novelty. As a PhD student in the lab, Emily examined this problem in the context of the functional evolution of germ line specification mechanisms. She successfully defended her PhD thesis in April 2025, and is pursuing postdoc in the field of reproductive genetics at Cornell University.

Evolution of a cytoplasmic determinant: evidence for the biochemical basis of functional evolution of the novel germ line regulator Oskar. Blondel, L., Besse, S. Rivard, E., Ylla, G. and Extavour, C.G. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 39(12):5491-5513 (2021). [PubMed]

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Protein sequence evolution underlies interspecies incompatibility of a cell fate determinant. Emily L. Rivard, John R. Srouji, Anastasia Repouliou and Cassandra G. Extavour bioRxiv, https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.08.02.668269 (2025). [PubMed]

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The LOTUS domain of Oskar promotes localisation of both protein and mRNA components of Drosophila germ plasm. Anastasia Repouliou, John R. Srouji, Emily L. Rivard, Andrés E. Leschziner and Cassandra G. Extavour bioRxiv, doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.05.02.651258 (2025). [PubMed]

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There and back again: the dynamic evolution of panarthropod germ cell specification mechanisms. Jonchee A. Kao, Emily L. Rivard, Rishabh R. Kapoor and Cassandra G. Extavour bioRxiv, https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.08.05.668520 (2025).

Related Media:

• Specifying primordial germ cells, a tale of transitions

[PubMed]

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Evolutionary innovation through fusion of sequences from across the tree of life. Rishabh R. Kapoor, Evelyn E. Schwager, Supanat Phuangphong, Emily L. Rivard, Chandrashekar Kuyyamudi, Suhrid Ghosh, Isobel Ronai and Cassandra G. Extavour bioRxiv, https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.08.30.672725 (2025). [PubMed]

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Rivard E.L., Ludwig A.G., Patel P.H., Grandchamp A., Arnold S.E., Berger A., Scott E.M., Kelly B.J., Mascha G.C., Bornberg-Bauer E., Findlay G.D. 2021. A putative de novo evolved gene required for spermatid chromatin condensation in Drosophila melanogaster. PLOS Genetics 17(9): e1009787. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1009787.