Dissertation Research: Molecular Evidence for the Origin ofthe Hawaiian Drosophilidae

9701251 DeSalle科学家们关于生物的遗传学和分子生物学的大部分知识都是从一种单一的昆虫--果蝇--黑腹果蝇那里获得的。果蝇属包含数千个物种。通过与其他物种的比较，尤其是在已知这些物种的系统发育历史的情况下，继续研究黑腹毛虫的生物学将是有益的。了解这一大群物种的系统发育历史是一项复杂的任务，因为没有任何单一的信息来源(例如，从所有物种获得的单一基因序列)足够强大，足以回答关于物种之间关系的所有问题。在这项研究中，Rob DeSalle和博士生James Remson将利用大量信息，特别是来自几个不同基因的DNA序列，重建黑腹果蝇近亲的系统发育历史。这项研究将集中在夏威夷群岛的物种上，那里发现了大量的果蝇物种。一个需要回答的主要问题是，夏威夷果蝇物种是起源于一个还是多个Ofindero物种。多组数据的使用应该会比以前更有力地重建果蝇的系统发育历史。

9701251 DESALLE Much of what scientists know about the genetics and molecular biology of living organisms has been learned from a single species of insect, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. The genus Drosophila contains thousands of species. Continuing research on the biology of D. melanogaster will benefit from comparisons with other species, especially if the phylogenetic history of these species is known. Understanding the phylogenetic history of this large group of species is a complex task, as no single source of information (e.g. the sequence of a single gene obtained from all species) is powerful enough to answer all questions about the relationships among species. In this research, Rob DeSalle and doctoral candidate James Remson will reconstruct the phylogenetic history for the closest relatives of Drosophila melanogaster using a large amount of information, especially from the DNA sequences of several different genes. The study will concentrate on species that live in the Hawaiian Islands, where a large number of Drosophila species are found. A major question to be answered is whether the Hawaiian Drosophila species arose from one, or more than one, OfounderO species. The use of multiple sets of data should provide a more robust reconstruction of the phylogenetic history of Drosophila than has been available previously.