DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Biochemistry and Molecular Evolution of Female Reproductive Tract Proteins in Drosophila

对广泛分类群的广泛研究表明，参与有性繁殖的蛋白质往往受到适应性进化的影响。这种模式背后的进化力量尚不清楚。尽管有几种理论假定雄性和雌性之间存在共同进化的作用，但这一点从未在体内受精的生物体中得到证实。这项拟议的研究探索了一种假设，即两性间的共同进化在果蝇雌性生殖道中三个消化酶家族的多样化中发挥了作用。具体地说，这项研究将探索这些基因家族独特的进化史，识别单个基因家族中的同源基因之间的功能差异，并确定这些功能差异与特定精液蛋白相互作用的关系。首先，这将是首次鉴定特定精液蛋白和雌性生殖道蛋白之间的生化相互作用，这对阐明内部肥料中间性动力学的分子基础至关重要。其次，这将大大增加我们目前对女性生殖道蛋白质的生化功能和分子进化的稀少知识。这一知识具有广泛的意义，因为生殖蛋白往往在很大的进化距离上表现出类似的功能。这项拟议的研究还将是一个罕见的案例，它将分子进化的详细研究与所涉及的蛋白质的功能分析相结合。因此，这些结果对于理解序列进化和生化进化之间的联系具有重要的意义。

Extensive research across a broad range of taxa has revealed that proteins involved in sexual reproduction are often subject to adaptive evolution. The evolutionary forces which underlie this pattern remain unclear. Although several theories postulate a role for coevolution between males and females, this has never been demonstrated in an internally fertilizing organism. The proposed research explores the hypothesis that intersexual coevolution has played a role in the diversification of three families of digestive proteases in Drosophila arizonae female reproductive tracts. Specifically, the research will explore the unique evolutionary history of these gene families, identify functional differences between paralogs in a single gene family, and determine how these functional differences relate to interaction with specific seminal proteins.The proposed research will make two major contributions to the study of reproduction. First, it will represent the first identification of biochemical interactions between specific seminal proteins and female reproductive tract proteins, which is critical elucidating the molecular basis of intersexual dynamics in internal fertilizers. Second, it will significantly increase our currently sparse knowledge of biochemical function and molecular evolution of female reproductive tract proteins. This knowledge is of broad significance, as reproductive proteins often exhibit similar functions across large evolutionary distances. The proposed research will additionally represent a rare case inwhich detailed studies of molecular evolution are combined with functional assays of theproteins involved. The results therefore have important implications for understandingthe connection between sequence evolution and biochemical evolution.