Alternative splicing as an evolutionary driver of phenotypic plasticity

进化变化被编码在基因组中——四个核苷酸的序列决定了我们星球上物种之间和物种内部的生物多样性。从表面上看，基因组变异应该为我们研究进化和对环境变化的反应提供答案。然而，具有完全相同基因组的生物体可以在响应环境因素时表现出高度多样化的表型。这种表型可塑性引起了生物学家的兴趣，但在很大程度上尚未得到解释。为了理解种群对选择和环境变化的反应，我们需要知道基因组是如何编码表型可塑性的，以及它是如何进化的。我们（和其他人）已经提出理论，认为影响选择性剪接的位点的遗传变异为表型可塑性提供了基础，但缺乏证据。为了研究这一点，我们需要检查与健康相关的极端可塑性。在你的项目中，你将使用进化遗传学模型，将长读转录组与基因组学相结合。

Evolutionary change is encoded in genomes - the sequence of four nucleotides determines the biodiversity between and within species on our planet. On the surface, genomic variation should provide us answers when we study evolution and responses to environmental change. However, organisms with the exact same genome can exhibit highly diverse phenotypes in response to environmental factors. Such phenotypic plasticity has intrigued biologists but has been left largely unexplained. To understand responses of populations to selection and environmental change we need to know how the genome encodes phenotypic plasticity and how it evolves. We (and others) have theorised that genetic variation in loci affecting alternative splicing provides a substrate for phenotypic plasticity, but evidence is lacking. To study this, we need to examine extreme plasticity linked to fitness. For your project you will use the evolutionary genetics model Drosophila melanogaster, combining long-read transcriptomes with genomics.