Life on Earth has undergone several major evolutionary transitions that dramatically changed their biology. These include exciting innovations such as the emergence of multicellular organisms (animals, plants, fungi), the evolution of terrestrial organisms, or parasitism. However, we don’t fully understand the genomic changes driving these transitions. In this project you will analyse genomic datasets with different methods (comparative genomics, reconstruction of evolutionary trees, etc) to investigate the genomic changes underlying these evolutionary leaps.
The student will identify the genetic changes associated with major adaptations in the evolution of life. These comprise the evolution of new genes, old genes being lost because are not necessary anymore, genes “borrowed” from other organisms, etc. You will compare millions of genes from over a hundred species, considering their evolutionary relationships with programs we have developed, and we will determine the biological functions of the genes involved in these changes.
We will apply an evolutionary genomics pipeline developed in the host lab, published in Current Biology, Nature Communications, and Nature Ecology and Evolution, to infer the evolution of gene families. The biological function of genes of interest (e.g., gained during terrestrialisation) will be interrogated via Gene Ontology. For molecular dating, the gene family members will be aligned with MAFFT, ambiguous regions will be trimmed with TrimAl, and trees will be inferred with software like IQTree and Phylobayes. The student will contribute on to the execution of these analyses and the overall design of the project and expand them by bringing in their own ideas and inform the research direction.
Altogether, this project will draw an integrative picture of the genomic basis of major evolutionary transitions. The supervisor would be happy to discuss possible changes to the project to better match the interests of the student.
For more information:
School of Biological Sciences | School of Biological Sciences | University of Bristol
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