Friday, 18th of December 2009 at 12:56:20 PMFunctional Genomics of Early Development in Sea Urchins
Chuan-Yih Yu,Indrani Sarkar,Nathan Nehrt,Rahul Gupta,Sashikiran Challa
PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Cross species hybridizations, which join the two sets of evolutionary divergent parental genomes, occur frequently in nature and can create new species. A most interesting outcome is the transgression of parental traits that produce hybrid progeny species strikingly distinct from their parents. Such transgression may result from the release of genetic constraints imposed by associated gene complexes that may otherwise seldom be disrupted. Studies of such phenomena have important implications for explaining some of the explosive diversification events in the evolutionary history of animals and plants, which give insights into the potential for adaptive revolutions. This project studies sea urchin that differ radically in their developmental mode: Heliocidaris tuberculata produces a typical indirect-developing feeding larva, called a pluteus; H. erythrogramma has evolved a derived, non-feeding direct-developing, mode of development. This project lead by Drs Elizabeth and Rudy Raff measures the coordinated regulation of genes from the two Heliocidaris parents during the ontogeny of hybrids by using cDNA microarrays. This approach allows a comparison of the gene expression profiles (patterns of gene transciption) that are both conserved and divergent among the parents and provide a dynamic picture of the interaction between the two parental genomes when combined within hybrids. CGB
Recent Comments