The Genetic Architecture of Colour and the Evolution of Marine colour polymorphisms

动物王国中的颜色被广泛用于各种目的，在某些情况下，还可以作为潜在遗传控制的直接表型指示器，为探索基本的进化过程提供了一个模型。到目前为止，颜色在海洋领域中的作用还没有得到很好的研究。此外，海洋生物中的颜色色素很少被描述，对海洋无脊椎动物颜色合成的分子控制知之甚少。由于地球表面近70%是水，80%以上的动物门完全是水生动物，这代表了我们对自然界理解的一个重大差距。热带海滨林卡是一个例外，它是一种常见的物种，以各种颜色变体存在。最引人注目的颜色变种的深皇家蓝色的色素是已知的，整个颜色基因已经被测序。因此，莱维果为海藻颜色的研究提供了一个独特的模型。这一博士学位论文最初将集中于确定莱维果的颜色变异是否依赖于蛋白质的变异，因此是否可以遗传。它还将包括棘皮动物的颜色变化，并使用基因插入技术来研究基因在体内的作用。此外，我的目标是重建一个新的星形总科系统发展史，因为目前关于该群体内部的关系几乎没有达成共识。

Colour in the animal kingdom is widely used for a variety of purposes and in some instances,may also act as a direct phenotypic indicator of underlying genetic control, providing a modelfor the exploration of fundamental evolutionary processes. To date, the role of colour in themarine realm has been poorly studied. Furthermore, colour pigments in marine organismshave rarely been characterised and very little is known about the molecular control of coloursynthesis in marine invertebrates. As almost 70% of the Earth's surface is water, and morethan 80% of animal phyla are exclusively aquatic, this represents a major gap in ourunderstanding of the natural world.One exception to this rule is the tropical seastar Linckia laevigata, a common species thatexists as a variety of colour morphs. The pigments responsible for the deep royal bluecolouration of the most striking colour morph are known, and the entire colour gene has beensequenced. L.laevigata therefore provides a unique model for the basis of studies of marinecolour.This PhD will initially focus on establishing whether colour variation in L.laevigata isdependent on protein variation and so heritable. It will also encompass colour variationthroughout the echinoderms and use gene insertion techniques to study the role of the genein vivo. In addition, I aim to reconstruct a new phylogeny of the Asteroidea as there iscurrently little consensus as to the relationships within the group.