DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Evolution of Gene Expression in Floral Diversification of Neotropical Gesneriaceae.

鲜花是人们与自然联系的最常见方式之一，并且具有吸引广大受众参与科学和进化的巨大潜力。此外，一个有趣而复杂的生物学问题是遗传和生态过程是如何促进花的快速进化和多样化的。这个项目的重点是非洲紫罗兰科的一个属，它由许多种类组成，花朵色彩鲜艳，种类繁多。因此，研究人员可以使用比较基因组方法来研究基因表达模式在多个物种之间的差异，以及与物种形成和授粉重要的花性状的关系。这项工作的结果将通过提供额外的证据来证明植物和传粉者之间复杂的遗传和生态相互作用促进了花卉的多样化，从而帮助研究人员和政府机构对生物多样性和保护感兴趣。对10种阿希曼花在两个发育阶段的表达基因进行高通量测序，将为在基因组水平上研究进化过程提供强大的数据集。具体来说，这项研究将进一步加深我们对基因表达和蛋白质进化在物种形成中的作用的理解。研究人员将利用跨多个物种的转录组基因表达水平，将表达变异与花的颜色、形状和授粉综合症之间的进化转变联系起来。他们还将确定在花发育过程中表达的靶基因是否具有正选择的特征。生成的基因组数据将用于(1)比较物种内部和物种之间的基因表达模式，(2)解决系统发育关系，以及(3)识别与花形态和授粉转变相关的蛋白质序列的共享和不同变化。

Flowers are among the most common ways that people connect to nature and have enormous potential to engage broad audiences in science and evolution. In addition, an intriguing and complex question in biology is how genetic and ecological processes promoted the rapid evolution and diversification of flowers. This project focuses on a genus in the African violet family, which is comprised of many species with highly colorful and diverse flowers. Thus the researchers can use comparative genomic approaches to investigate how patterns of gene expression vary across multiple species and relate to flower traits important for speciation and pollination. Results of this work will aid researchers and government agencies interested in biodiversity and conservation by providing additional evidence for the complex genetic and ecological interactions between plants and pollinators that have promoted flower diversification.High throughput sequencing of expressed genes from flowers in two developmental stages of 10 species of Achimenes will provide a powerful dataset for investigating evolutionary processes at the genome level. Specifically, the study will further our understanding of the role of gene expression and protein evolution in speciation. The researchers will use transcriptome-wide levels of gene expression across multiple species to associate variation in expression with evolutionary transitions between flower color, shape, and pollination syndrome. They will also determine if target genes expressed during flower development have signatures of positive selection. The genomic data generated will be used to (1) compare patterns of gene expression within and among species, (2) resolve phylogenetic relationships, and (3) identify shared and divergent changes to protein sequences that correlate to transitions in floral form and pollination.