Líffræðifélag Íslands - biologia.is
Líffræðiráðstefnan 2017

Erindi/veggspjald / Talk/poster E86

Expressional rescue of wing morphology defects in Drosophila melanogaster

Höfundar / Authors: Dagný Ásta Rúnarsdóttir (1), Baldur Kristjánsson (1), Arnar Pálsson (1), Sudarshan Chari (2), Ian Dworkin (3)

Starfsvettvangur / Affiliations: 1. Háskóli Íslands, 2. Princeton University, 3. McMaster Unviersity

Kynnir / Presenter: Dagný Ásta Rúnarsdóttir

Gene regulation is greatly important during developmental and physiological processes in multicellular organisms. It's the bridge between genotype and phenotype e.g. by giving rise to different cell types with identical genomes. The interactions of chromatin structure, transcription factors, numerous other regulators and DNA elements regulate transcription. Changes in gene regulation are also thought to be an important mechanism of evolution. To get a glimpse of how regulatory systems evolve, we study tissue specific changes in special strains of Drosophila melanogaster, that underwent genetic perturbation and subsequent compensatory evolution. Three mutations disrupting wing morphology (vg 1 | rho ve-1 | net 1) were introgressed into wild type population. Then populations were subject to compensatory selection for improved wings (CAS: 3 replicate populations) and natural selection against the harmful effects of the major mutations (NASC 3 replicate populations). We seek to answer how gene expression responds to these treatments and if and how it manages to rebuild the wing. In order to do so, mRNA was isolated from wing discs and sequenced on Illumina HiSeq. Trimming, mapping and counting was done using both Kallisto and Cutadapt-STAR-HTSeq, separately, with continuous count analyzed in DESeq2. We see expressional compensation in both CAS and NASC, with limited overlap between them. Both expected and unexpected players were found like wing associated transcriptional factor and histone genes, respectively.