PRF/M: Developmental Quantitative Genetic Aspects of Morphological Evolution

加拿大达尔豪斯大学（Dalhousie University）的环境生物学中期奖学金任期将有6个月（或7个月），使北卡罗来纳州立大学的William R. Atchley博士能够与Brian K. Hall博士及其团队进行合作合成。我们将努力将发育生物学的方法与数量遗传学相结合；哺乳动物颅下颌骨的生长和形态发生将作为感兴趣的范式焦点。特别是，首先，Atchley博士将努力获得与骨骼发育生物学相关的实验室程序的专业知识，例如骨骼组织凝聚物的分离和培养，以确定细胞结构，相对发育速度，以及个体发育过程中事件的时间编排。其次，他将通过更详细地探索以下主题来阐述先前开发的协方差矩阵模型：(1)不同发育过程（例如，增生和肥大）在不同性状之间产生遗传相关性中的作用；(2)进化约束的发育起源；(3)发育过程中异时事件的定量遗传方面；(4)如何将表观遗传相互作用纳入定量遗传模型。奖学金任期的最后一个月将在爱丁堡大学（苏格兰）遗传学系威廉·g·希尔博士的实验室度过。

Six (of seven) months of Mid-Career Fellowship in Environmental Biology tenure will be spent at Dalhousie University (Canada), enabling Dr. William R. Atchley of North Carolina State University to engage in a collaborative synthesis with Dr. Brian K. Hall and his group. The effort will be to integrate approaches of developmental biology with quantitative genetics; mammalian craniomandibular growth and morphogenesis will serve as the paradigmatic focus of interest. In particular, first Dr. Atchley will strive to acquire expertise in laboratory procedures pertinent to skeletal developmental biology, such as isolation and culture of skeletal tissue condensations, in order to determine cellular architecture, relative rates of development, and temporal orchestration of events during ontogeny. Secondly, he will elaborate on a previously developed covariance matrix model by exploring in greater detail topics such as (1) the role of various developmental processes (e.g., hyperplasia and hypertrophy) in generating genetic correlations among dissimilar traits, (2) the developmental origin of evolutionary constraints, (3) quantitative genetic aspects of heterochronic events during development, and (4) how epigenetic interactions can be incorproated into quantitative genetic models. A final month of fellowship tenure will be spent at the University of Edinburgh's (Scotland) Department of Genetics in Dr. William G. Hill's laboratory.