Dissertation Research: Molecular Evolution of the Endo16 cis-regulatory System

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The sea urchin gene Endo16 will be used to examine molecular evolution in DNA sequences responsible for gene regulation, called promoters. The functional consequences of the observed evolutionary changes will be tested among several closely related species. These issues will be addressed using DNA sequence comparisons, gene expression localizations, and experimental tests of promoter function. The ability to perform analyses of promoter function in any sea urchin species will provide a detailed picture of how promoter sequence variation arises within populations and accumulates to create more extensive species-level differences in promoter sequence, organization, and regulatory mechanisms.The widespread conservation of protein products across the animal kingdom and the evolutionary correlation of changes in gene expression with changes in morphology suggest that change in gene regulatory sequences is an important basis for phenotypic evolution. Previous studies of molecular evolution in gene regulatory sequences have been limited by incomplete knowledge of the structure and function of the promoter region and the inability to perform the necessary functional experiments in more than one species. This project will provide one of the first detailed pictures of genetic variation in promoter sequences, furthering our understanding of the genetic differences underlying phenotypic evolution between species.