Disertation Research: Adaptive Response to Transposable Element Invasion

转座因子（te）是一种小的DNA序列，通过复制转座（在基因组的不同部分之间移动）增加其在宿主基因组中的数量。由于它们对宿主的负面适应性影响，TEs被认为是基因组寄生虫，它们与宿主基因组的相互作用是宿主-寄生虫共同进化的基本和普遍的一类。尽管很少发生，但由于TE在入侵后的高迁移率，预计TE对新宿主的入侵将在短时间内对宿主基因组产生巨大的进化影响。本研究旨在研究宿主- te的共同进化动力学。P元素在不到一个世纪前侵入黑腹果蝇（Drosophila melanogaster）。这项研究将确定可能在共同进化动力学中起重要作用的候选基因，然后探索这些基因的功能后果。了解宿主和TEs的共同进化对人类健康至关重要，因为人类基因组也充斥着TEs，它们可能是几种人类疾病的原因。此外，由于TEs具有复制性和侵袭性，因此被认为是可行的生物防治剂。这项建议的研究将进一步了解引入te对目标生物的进化影响，这对于评估此类建议的可行性至关重要。

Transposable elements (TEs) are small DNA sequences that increase their number in host genomes by replicative transposition (moving between different parts of the genome). Because of their negative fitness impacts on hosts, TEs are considered as genomic parasites and their interaction with host genomes is a fundamental and ubiquitous class of host-parasite coevolution. Even though happening infrequently, invasion of TEs into new hosts is expected to reveal a large evolutionary impact on host genomes over a short period because of the high rates of TE movements following the invasion. This study proposes to investigate host-TE coevolutionary dynamics from the host?s perspective by focusing on the evolutionary effects of P elements, which invaded Drosophila melanogaster less than a century ago. The research will identify candidate genes that might have an important role in the coevolutionary dynamics followed by an exploration of the functional consequences of those genes. Understanding the coevolution of hosts and TEs is crucial to human health because human genomes are also infested with TEs and they may be the cause of several human diseases. Also, TEs have been proposed as plausible biological control agents because of their replicative and invasive nature. This proposed study will further the understanding of the evolutionary impacts of introduced TEs on the targeted organisms, which is crucial for assessing the feasibility of such proposals.