DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Biochemistry and Molecular Evolution of Female Reproductive Tract Proteins in Drosophila

广泛的研究表明，与有性生殖有关的蛋白质经常受到适应性进化的影响。这种模式背后的进化力量尚不清楚。虽然有几种理论假设雄性和雌性之间的共同进化作用，但这从未在内部受精的生物体中得到证实。本研究提出了一种假设，即雌雄间共同进化在果蝇雌性生殖道中三个消化蛋白酶家族的多样化中发挥了作用。具体而言，该研究将探索这些基因家族的独特进化史，确定单个基因家族中相似物之间的功能差异，并确定这些功能差异与特定精液蛋白相互作用的关系。拟议的研究将对生殖研究作出两大贡献。首先，它将首次确定特定的精液蛋白与雌性生殖道蛋白之间的生化相互作用，这对阐明内肥料中两性动力学的分子基础至关重要。其次，它将大大增加我们目前对女性生殖道蛋白的生物化学功能和分子进化的贫乏知识。这一知识具有广泛的意义，因为生殖蛋白在大的进化距离中经常表现出相似的功能。拟议的研究还将代表一个罕见的案例，其中分子进化的详细研究与所涉及蛋白质的功能分析相结合。因此，这一结果对于理解序列进化与生物化学进化之间的联系具有重要意义。

Extensive research across a broad range of taxa has revealed that proteins involved in sexual reproduction are often subject to adaptive evolution. The evolutionary forces which underlie this pattern remain unclear. Although several theories postulate a role for coevolution between males and females, this has never been demonstrated in an internally fertilizing organism. The proposed research explores the hypothesis that intersexual coevolution has played a role in the diversification of three families of digestive proteases in Drosophila arizonae female reproductive tracts. Specifically, the research will explore the unique evolutionary history of these gene families, identify functional differences between paralogs in a single gene family, and determine how these functional differences relate to interaction with specific seminal proteins.The proposed research will make two major contributions to the study of reproduction. First, it will represent the first identification of biochemical interactions between specific seminal proteins and female reproductive tract proteins, which is critical elucidating the molecular basis of intersexual dynamics in internal fertilizers. Second, it will significantly increase our currently sparse knowledge of biochemical function and molecular evolution of female reproductive tract proteins. This knowledge is of broad significance, as reproductive proteins often exhibit similar functions across large evolutionary distances. The proposed research will additionally represent a rare case inwhich detailed studies of molecular evolution are combined with functional assays of theproteins involved. The results therefore have important implications for understandingthe connection between sequence evolution and biochemical evolution.