How do you get your genes in the next generation?
Fertilize your neighbours by making the best pollen! (in case you happen to be a member of Arabis alpina, commonly known as the Alpine rock-cress). Alternatively, you could be a strong and independent Arabis alpine - who don't need no pollen and fixes reproduction all by herself. Both self-fertilization and outcrossing occurs in Arabis alpina, but the latter strategy poses a greater challenge on the plant’s pollen to compete with that of other plants. This is what Juanita Gutiérrez-Valencia could detect even at the gene-level, where she observed that self-fertilizing plants had accumulated more debilitating mutations in their pollen-making genes than their outcrossing relatives, which rely more heavily on the excellent quality of their pollen. Juanita is a MEME graduate who is now working on her PhD at Stockholm University. She was interviewed in this episode by Hilde Schneemann who is doing an external project at Cambridge University at the time of recording.
Written by Hilde Schneemann IMPORTANT NOTE from Juanita - "At some point during the interview I misused the term Darwinian Selection -- also known as positive selection. Darwinian selection leads to the spread of an allele with beneficial effects on its carrier. If you remember in the interview, we were measuring purifying or negative selection, by which variants with deleterious effects are removed from the population. Therefore, the usage of Darwinian Selection is wrong in this context.”
You can follow Juanita for updates about her scientific journey on Research Gate.
Juanita did her Arabis project and is now doing her PhD with the Slotte lab, check them out out here ! Juanita also mentioned her other MEME projects with Professor Guillaume Chomicki and Professor Susanne Renner. Subscribe and listen to MEME Stream on soundcloud! Follow us on twitter! This episode is brought to you by:
Juanita enjoying the sun and flowers in Stockholm (left). A naturalist drawing of Arabis alpina subsp. alpina, by E.H.L. Krause (middle). Hilde and Juanita after their interview (right).
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About the MEME StreamA podcast following MEME students past and present on their adaptive walks of life as they embark on a career in evolutionary biology. The MEME is a unique masters program that enables upcoming evolutionary biologists from all over the globe to study and research in Europe. These podcasts will travel all over Europe and the world, leaping, as Richard Dawkins says, from brain to brain, MEME to MEME, telling tales of our scientific ventures and research projects. ArchivesCategories |