US-Switzerland Planning Visit: Gene Expression and Genetic Manipulation of House Fly Sex Determination

该项目将启动休斯顿大学理查德·梅塞尔研究小组与瑞士和荷兰同事之间的新合作。梅塞尔和他的同事将研究雄性和雌性家蝇如何从相同的基因中发展出不同的特征。特别是，该研究将重点关注基因表达（基因产生 RNA 和蛋白质）在男性和女性之间的差异。家蝇非常适合这种实验，因为启动雄性和雌性性状产生的发育机制已被表征，基因组已被测序，并且遗传实验的资源是可用的。 Meisel 小组的研究人员将前往瑞士苏黎世的 Daniel Bopp 实验室，学习家蝇基因操作技术。他们还将与欧洲合作者合作设计实验，揭示雄性和雌性发育途径的突变如何影响整个家蝇基因组的基因表达。这些实验将解决有关发育途径结构的基本问题，并为害虫的遗传控制策略提供信息。一名研究生将参加计划访问，并且将招募来自科学领域代表性不足的群体的本科生来协助实验。 PI 将进一步使用这项研究中的例子，为休斯顿学校的中学科学教师提供大量高危学生群体的培训练习。发展网络通常由保守的中心节点组成，这些节点接收来自进化动态上游调节器的输入。据推测，中央节点是保守的，因为对它们的扰动会产生有害的表型效应，而上游调节因子在进化上是不稳定的，部分原因是这些通路对这些变化是稳健的。性别决定（SD）是检验这一假设的理想模型，因为 SD 网络具有预测的进化保守模式，并且 SD 基因及其产生的性别特异性表型是众所周知的。这项新的合作将允许进行使用 RNAi 和转基因方法来操纵家蝇 SD 途径的实验。将测量包括基因表达在内的有机体表型，以测试对保守节点的扰动是否比其上游调节因子的变化产生更严重的表型后果。

This project will initiate a new collaboration between Richard Meisel's research group at the University of Houston and colleagues in Switzerland and the Netherlands. Meisel and his colleagues will study how male and female house flies develop distinct sets of traits from the same genes. In particular, the research will focus on how gene expression - the production of RNA and protein from genes - differs between males and females. The house fly is well suited for this line of experimentation because the developmental mechanisms that initiate the production of male and female traits are characterized, the genome is sequenced, and resources for genetic experimentation are available. Researchers in the Meisel group will travel to Daniel Bopp's laboratory in Zurich, Switzerland to learn techniques for the genetic manipulation of houseflies. They will also work with European collaborators to design experiments that uncover how mutations in the male and female developmental pathways affect the expression of genes throughout the house fly genome. These experiments will address fundamental questions about the structure of developmental pathways and inform genetic control strategies for insect pests. A graduate student will participate in the planning visit, and undergraduates from under-represented groups in the sciences will be recruited to assist with the experiments. The PI will further use examples from this research in training exercises for middle school science teachers in Houston schools with large at-risk student populations.Developmental networks often consist of conserved central nodes that receive input from evolutionarily dynamic upstream regulators. It is hypothesized that the central nodes are conserved because perturbations to them have deleterious phenotypic effects, whereas the upstream regulators are evolutionarily labile in part because the pathways are robust to these changes. Sex determination (SD) is an ideal model for testing this hypothesis because SD networks have the predicted pattern of evolutionary conservation, and SD genes and the sex-specific phenotypes they produce are well known. This new collaboration will allow for experiments in which RNAi and transgenic approaches are used to manipulate the house fly SD pathway. Organismal phenotypes, including gene expression, will be measured to test whether perturbations to conserved nodes have more drastic phenotypic consequences than changes in their upstream regulators.