This research fills an important gap in knowledge about the genetic mechanisms by which organisms diverge over evolutionary time to form distinct species. It also provides a platform for graduate and undergraduate training in molecular genetics, developmental biology and evolution, and an exciting opportunity for under-represented high school students from the local community to participate in this research and to undertake a formal in-residence summer training program in molecular genetics designed for high school students taught at the University of Chicago.
Multicellular organisms undergo complex development processes beginning with a fertilized egg to produce the adult body plan with specialized body parts and organs. One of the great scientific achievements of the comparative genomics era is the discovery that many of the genes and genetic pathways that orchestrate this developmental process are widely shared across distantly related taxonomic groups, spanning fruit flies (the subject of this investigation) and our own species. From this discovery, it is widely assumed that the crucial regulators of shared developmental processes will be functionally conserved and will not contribute to the evolutionary divergence that accompanies speciation and adaptive change. This research challenges this assumption with a set of precise genetic experiments in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, involving conserved genes required for establishing its anterior-posterior segmented body plan. For each of three genes, Bicoid, giant, and hunchback, protein coding and noncoding cis-regulatory sequences from different fly species will be challenged to replace their orthologous counterparts in Drosophila melanogaster. Evidence of functional divergence will be sought in embryonic gene expression, protein expression, development, viability, and co-evolutionary interaction with the gene even-skipped, a shared regulatory target.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
