Auburn researcher uses biology's real butterfly effect to decipher DNA

Hundreds of thousands of microscopic scales create a butterfly’s wings.

They’re what most people admire.

Brian Counterman, on the other hand, is more interested in what created them.

Counterman, an associate professor of biological sciences in the College of Sciences and Mathematics, studies butterflies to answer a question much bigger than the insects themselves: How can one tiny change in DNA shape how life survives, adapts and evolves?

“I’m interested in the genotype-to-phenotype connection,” Counterman said. “How you have changes to the DNA level that ultimately result in changes to the organism.”

It’s a question he’s spent his entire career chasing. That's not because he grew up fascinated by butterflies. It's because he was fascinated by understanding how things work.

As a college student, Counterman was studying physics when a summer job watering plants in a biology lab unexpectedly changed everything. Before long, he was learning how to extract DNA, asking bigger questions about genetics and discovering a career he never knew existed.

When scientists began making breakthroughs that allowed researchers to read DNA in ways they never could before, Counterman knew he wanted to be a part of it.

“It was so cool to be alive at this time on this planet, to be able to do this type of work,” he said. “Literally nobody could have done it before.”

Butterflies, it turned out, were the perfect place to look.

More than a pretty wing

“Butterfly wing color patterns are an awesome system to study,” said Counterman, whose arms are covered in butterfly tattoos. “If you’re the wrong color, you die.”

A butterfly with the wrong wing pattern in the wrong place probably won’t survive. In Heliconius butterflies, bright reds, yellows and whites warn birds that the insects are toxic after feeding on passionflower vines. Other butterflies rely on camouflage to avoid predators. Wing colors can also influence which butterflies choose to mate with one another, slowly separating populations until they become an entirely different species.

“They’re important for camouflage. Some colors are warning colorations that they’re toxic. They’re used in all sorts of various ways,” he said.

Every wing tells a story. Counterman’s lab works through it — backwards.

Instead of asking why one butterfly is red and another is yellow, researchers search for the tiny change in DNA that created the pattern. Over the past two decades, Counterman and collaborators have identified many of those genetic changes, discovering that butterfly species separated by millions of years often rely on the same handful of genes to create completely different wing patterns, even when those changes evolved independently.

That's when the research stops being about butterflies.

The same genes that shape a butterfly's wings also exist in many other animals, including humans. By learning how those genes work in butterflies, researchers gain a better understanding of how living things grow, adapt and respond to the world around them.

The chase

For Auburn biological sciences doctoral student Hannah Walton, the bigger picture started with a butterfly net.

As an undergraduate, Walton spent a summer hiking through the mountains of Colorado, oversized net in hand, chasing butterflies through alpine meadows.

"I remember thinking, 'People actually research butterflies,'" Walton said. “‘This is kind of changing my life.’"

At first, she thought butterfly research mostly meant conservation.

"I had this naive understanding of what butterfly researchers did," Walton said. "You can really do kind of whatever you want. If it has something to do with a biological question, chances are you can use a butterfly."

That curiosity led her to a lecture by Counterman while she was finishing her undergraduate degree at the University of South Carolina.

"I was like, 'Huh, this is really cool stuff,'" Walton said. "After talking with him and spending some time with him while he was visiting, I thought, 'You know what? I think I'm going to apply to grad school.'"

Today, Walton studies how environmental conditions shape butterfly development in Counterman's lab. She now finds herself having the same conversation with people that Counterman does.

"I feel like people think the research is cutesy because it's butterflies," she said. "But then you realize you can understand so much about biology by using butterflies as a study organism."