Co-Evolving Genomes: The Impact of Mitochondrial Genome Instability on the Nucleus

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Essentially all eukaryotic cells, including those of humans, contain multiple genomes, and key biological functions depend on the interaction between the gene products that are encoded in each of these genomes. This project will address fundamental questions about how changes in one genome within a cell can elicit compensatory changes in another to maintain basic cellular functions. This work will provide training in cutting edge molecular genetic and computational techniques to students all the way from the undergraduate to the postdoctoral level, and findings from this research will be integrated into undergraduate education through the development of a new capstone course in molecular evolution at Colorado State University.This research project will compare species of flowering plants that exhibit enormous natural variation in the rate of evolutionary change in their mitochondrial genomes. The project will generate and analyze large datasets of gene sequences from the nuclear genomes of these species. Analysis of sequence variation within and between these species will be used to identify changes in the nuclear genome in response to the different rates of evolution in the mitochondrial genome. Findings from these comparative analyses will be complemented by performing genetic manipulations in a well-established model species to test the biochemical and physiological effects of changes in specific genes.