Population genomics of evolutionary conflicts

尽管在同一基因组中被发现，但不同基因的进化利益，甚至单基因内的突变可能会相互冲突。例如，在植物中，赋予花粉繁殖成功的竞争优势的突变可能会对植物生命周期的其他阶段产生有害的副作用。同样，自私的遗传因素会增强自身的传播能力，可以在种群中传播，尽管可能会对生物体产生有害的健康影响。虽然这些案例在理论上已经得到了很好的描述，而且全基因组序列的日益增长揭示了自私遗传元素在基因组中的优势，但这些冲突对于维持遗传多样性和推动基因组进化的进化重要性仍然知之甚少，这是这笔赠款的一个重点。这一建议旨在解决几个主要的悬而未决的问题，包括：1)花粉竞争存在多少遗传变异，自然选择如何作用于这种变异？2)自私的遗传因素在植物群体中Y染色体的退化中起重要作用吗？3)交配系统和倍性的进化转变(个体拥有的基因组副本数量)是否影响自私遗传因素的进化命运？以及4)通过掩盖有害突变来增加基因在群体中传播的突变？通过研究基因组和基因表达变异的模式，我们希望对进化冲突在维持遗传多样性和构建基因组进化结构方面的重要性获得重要的新见解。

Despite being found within the same genome, the evolutionary interests of different genes, and even  mutations within single genes can conflict with each other. In plants for example, mutations that confer a competitive advantage to pollen for reproductive success may have harmful side-effects on other phases of the plant's life-cycle. Similarly, selfish genetic elements, which enhance their own ability to transmit themselves, can spread through populations, despite the potential for harmful fitness effects on the organism. While these cases have been well characterized theoretically, and the growing availability of whole genome sequences has revealed the predominance of selfish genetic elements across genomes, the evolutionary importance of these conflicts for maintaining genetic diversity and driving genome evolution remains poorly understood, and is a focus of this grant. This proposal aims to address several major open questions including: 1) How much genetic variation is there for pollen competition, and how does natural selection act on this variation? 2) Do selfish genetic elements play an important role in the degeneration of Y chromosomes in plant populations?, 3) Do evolutionary transitions in mating system and ploidy (the number of genome copies an individual has) influence the evolutionary fate of selfish genetic elements?, and 4) Do mutations that increase the expression of genes spread through populations by masking harmful mutations? By studying patterns of genome and gene expression variation, we hope to gain important new insights into the importance of evolutionary conflicts in maintaining genetic diversity and structuring the evolution of genomes.