Molecular evolution of developmental regulatory pathways

在动物的发育过程中，许多细胞和细胞类型（包括干细胞）会选择何时何地改变它们的“命运”。 这些决定由作用于细胞（外部或外部因素）和细胞内（内在）的分子途径控制。 这些“信号转导”途径对于理解这些细胞选择至关重要。 幸运的是，即使在原始动物中，这些通路中的分子也往往非常相似，这使得我们能够使用简单的动物“模型”进行这些研究。 在这个提议中，我们想做一些实验，让我们了解是什么让这些分子通路发生变化和进化，从而使不同的动物具有彼此不同的特征。 我们将使用一种简单的动物，土壤线虫小杆线虫，来研究控制一个简单选择的分子，即男性和女性命运之间的选择。 我们已经证明，在两个相关的小杆线虫物种（秀丽隐杆线虫和Briggsae）中，相同的分子以不同的方式控制这种选择。 在一个物种中，我们已经确定了许多相关因素，而在第二个物种中，我们还没有。 我们选择的动物模型允许我们使用许多不同的方法（遗传学，分子生物学，基因组学和细胞生物学）。

During development of animals, many cells and cell types (including stem cells) make choices as to when and where to change their 'fate'. These decisions are controlled by pathways of molecules that act both on the cell (outside or extrinsic factors) and inside the cell (intrinsic). These 'signal transduction' pathways are critically important for understanding these cellular choices. Fortunately, the molecules in these pathways are often very similar in even primitive animals, allowing us to use simple animal 'models' for these studies. In this proposal, we want to do experiments that will allow us to understand what allows these molecular pathways to change and evolve, so that different animals have different characteristics from one another. We will be using a simple animal, the soil nematode Caenorhabditis, examining the molecules that control a simple choice, that between male and female fates. We have already shown that in two related Caenorhabditis species (elegans and briggsae), that the same molecules act in different ways to control this choice. In one species, we have identified many of the relevant factors, while in the second, we have not. The animal model that we have chosen allows us to use many different approaches (genetics, molecular biology, genomics and cell biology).