Selection and evolution of coat colour in a wild mammal

野生哺乳动物毛色的选择和进化

• 批准号: 2301415
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Sheffield
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2301415
• 关键词: Selection; evolution; coat; colour; wild

This project offers the opportunity to study evolutionary genetics as part of the Soay sheep project, one of the most data-rich long-term studies of any vertebrate in the world. There will be opportunities to visit and work on St Kilda, a UNESCO world heritage site.Understanding how genetic and phenotypic variation changes in response to environmental conditions remains one of the great challenges in evolutionary biology. Ten years ago we published a paper in Science (Gratten et al. 2008) showing how allelic variation at the TYRP1 gene underlying a coat colour polymorphism in a wild Soay sheep population has been under natural selection, and how variation at TYRP1 has been maintained. In the following decade, the environment on St Kilda has changed, the population size has increased, and demographic models (conducted by co-supervisor DZC) predict a dramatic change in allele frequency dynamics.Here the student will combine evolutionary genomics tools (SNP genetic profiling), state-of-the-art demographic modelling and ecological data to study how Soay sheep coat colour evolutionary dynamics have changed in the last decade. The findings will shed further light on the evolution and maintenance of genetic variation, and will provide a framework with which to robustly test demographic predictive models. Testing how gene frequencies change in response to real-time environmental change is not often possible in wild vertebrate populations, but the short generation time (males and females can breed at age 6 months) and long-term data set make the St Kilda Soay sheep population an exception. Since our previous publication several thousand sheep have been born and monitored throughout their lifetimes. Advances in genomics tools mean that SNP genotype data (at ~500,000 loci) are available for nearly all of them. There are very few, if any, comparable opportunities to study evolutionary dynamics of fitness loci in the natural environment.

这个项目提供了研究进化遗传学的机会，作为Soay羊项目的一部分，这是世界上所有脊椎动物中数据最丰富的长期研究之一。将有机会参观和工作圣基尔达，这是联合国教科文组织的世界遗产。了解遗传和表型变异如何随着环境条件的变化而变化仍然是进化生物学的巨大挑战之一。十年前，我们在《科学》杂志上发表了一篇论文（Gratten et al. 2008），展示了野生Soay羊种群中导致毛色多态性的TYRP1基因的等位基因变异是如何在自然选择下发生的，以及TYRP1基因的变异是如何维持的。在接下来的十年里，圣基尔达的环境发生了变化，种群规模增加了，人口模型（由共同主管DZC进行）预测等位基因频率动态会发生巨大变化。在这里，学生将结合进化基因组学工具（SNP基因图谱），最先进的人口统计学建模和生态数据来研究过去十年中索伊羊毛色进化动态的变化。这些发现将进一步阐明遗传变异的进化和维持，并将提供一个框架，以有力地测试人口预测模型。在野生脊椎动物种群中，测试基因频率如何随实时环境变化而变化通常是不可能的，但短的世代时间（雄性和雌性可以在6个月大时繁殖）和长期的数据集使St Kilda Soay羊种群成为一个例外。自我们之前的出版物以来，已经有几千只羊出生并在其一生中进行了监测。基因组学工具的进步意味着几乎所有人都可以获得SNP基因型数据（约50万个位点）。在自然环境中，很少有类似的机会来研究适合位点的进化动力学。