Evolution of the mRNA pool in Drosophila eggs and its effect on development

描述（由申请人提供）：在包括人类在内的动物中，母亲向卵子提供驱动关键早期发育阶段的mrna和蛋白质。这些由母体提供的因素直接控制着早期发育过程，并为以后的发育建立轨迹。在实验室中改变模式生物中母体沉积因子的水平可以对发育产生巨大影响，从而对成年表型产生巨大影响。尽管这些母体提供的因素对生物体的发育和适应性很重要，但人们对它们是如何进化的知之甚少。这是特别有趣的，

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In animals, including humans, mothers supply eggs with the mRNAs and proteins that drive the critical early stages of development. These maternally supplied factors directly control early developmental processes, and establish trajectories for the rest of development. Altering the levels of maternally deposited factors in model organisms in the laboratory can have dramatic effects on development, and hence adult phenotypes. Despite the importance of these maternally supplied factors to the development and fitness of the organism, little is known about how they evolve. This is of particular interest, because genetic control over this period of development has to be coordinated across two different genomes, that of the mother and that of the zygote, a form of epistasis which may pose a particular challenge to evolution. The fly species in the genus Drosophila, with its rich diversity of species covering 50 million years of divergence time, provide a great model for such a study. The Drosophila system has the advantage of extensive catalogs of the mRNAs and proteins deposited by females of the model species D. melanogaster, and much research has gone into understanding the specific developmental and regulatory roles of many of these factors. Despite the extent of the previous work in D. melanogaster, we know very little about how these maternally derived factors vary across species. This work proposes to: 1) characterize the mRNA pools in embryos, both those deposited by the mother and those later transcribed by the zygote, within and between Drosophila species, using mRNA sequencing methods, 2) determine phylogenetic patterns and life-history correlates of maternal and zygotic mRNA pool changes, and 3) identify genetic mechanisms underlying the evolutionary turnover of mRNA pools within and between species. The goal of this project is to understand how these mRNA pools evolve, and what the effect of these changes will be on the developmental process and the fitness of the organism.