| Popis: |
Work on the evolution of the Drosophila bag-of-marbles (bam) gene in the Aquadro lab. Bam plays a key role in early gametogenesis, making it surprising that it shows evidence of rapid and episodic evolution. Here we are exploring they hypothesis that Wolbachia, a germline endosymbiotic bacteria is contributing to bam's rapid evolution. We have discovered a novel interaction between bam and Wolbachia in males; we have created a pipeline to look for the possibility of historic Wolbachia and bam interactions, finding evidence of this in some D. mel individuals; and we have developed two models in which bam and Wolbachia may be interacting, with preliminary results suggesting a model of convergent molecular evolution. |
