Evolutionary, developmental, and physiological genomics of salmonid fishes

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Whole genome duplication (WGD) events where all the chromosomes in each cell undergo a complete doubling to give rise to a completely identical set of genes are now recognized as being potential accelerators of evolutionary change in animals and plants. The fates of new genes that arise from WGD are varied, but most duplicated copies appear destined to become nonfunctional (silenced). We still do not understand why some genes are retained as duplicates for long periods of time as essentially identical copies of one another, while other duplicate genes diverge from one another and acquire new expression patterns and potentially new functions. I use salmonid fishes (trout, salmon, charr) to study the distribution and retention of duplicate genes because they are the most recent vertebrate group to have undergone a WGD event in their ancestry. I contrast the patterns of duplicate gene expression in Arctic charr (