Steacie Fellowship RTI -From genes to societies in ants: infrastructure for rapid determination of expression and function of genes controlling development and evolution of complexity in ant societies

新的形态或行为特征是如何在生物系统中起源和进化的，这一直是进化生物学中一个尚未解决的核心问题。我在麦吉尔大学的实验室试图通过研究控制多种动物胚胎发育的基因来解决这个问题。这些基因已经保存了数百万年，控制着所有动物的发展，包括水母、蚂蚁和人类。蚂蚁是一个强大的模型系统，可以理解这些基因如何与环境相互作用，因为蚁群中的不同种姓，如蚁后和工蚁，是截然不同的，是由环境决定的。例如，根据一个年轻的胚胎被喂养的方式，它可以发育成一个女王，活30年，也可以发育成一个工蜂，只活几个月。这种一般的方法将揭示发育基因如何对其环境作出反应，以及这种环境反应如何有助于生物系统中新特征的起源和进化。本提案中所要求的设备将使我的实验室更接近于解开这个尚未解决的问题，并将提供关于形态和行为多样性是如何在进化时间中产生的见解。

How novel morphological or behavioural features originate and then evolve in biological systems has remained a central, yet unresolved, problem in evolutionary biology. My lab at McGill University attempts to address this problem by studying the genes controlling embryonic development in a diverse array of animals. These genes have been conserved for millions of years and control the development of all animals, including jellyfish, ants, and humans. Ants are a powerful model system to understand how these genes interact with their environment because different castes in an ant colony, such as queens and workers, are dramatically different and are determined by the environment. For example, depending on what a young embryo is fed, it can develop up into a queen and live for 30 years or develop into a worker and live for only a few months. This general approach will reveal how developmental genes respond to their environment, and how this environmental response may contribute to the origin and evolution of novel features in biological systems. The equipment requested in this proposal will bring my lab one step closer to unlocking this unresolved problem, and will provide insight into how morphological and behavioural diversity is generated over evolutionary time.