What do you do with a spare genome?
If you thought only plants could do crazy things with their genomes, then you’re in for a surprise. Sturgeons are a group of the most ancient bony fish that from the outside, seemed to have changed very little since they hung out among the dinosaurs over 200 million years ago. However, their genetics tells a different story. Jelena’s research in Montpellier showed that at least three times during their evolutionary history, different lineages of these fish have doubled all their chromosomes going from diploidy (two copies of each chromosome) to tetraploidy (four copies of each chromosome). Such events are mostly known to happen in plants, but the sturgeons have proven that animals can do it too. But once you got this “spare” genome, what do you do with it? Some of these extra chromosomes started to develop their own unique functions, differentiating them from the other copies. This process is called “functional diploidization." This is where the genetic material of a tetraploid species degenerates to become functionally diploid but maintains twice as many different chromosomes. Jelena studied several genetic markers in 10 species of sturgeon to find out how many of them would show traces of this process and how often the transition from diploidy to tetraploidy may have occurred in the evolutionary history of sturgeons. In this episode, she will tell us about her findings and share some of her insights on how to embrace the unexpected on the journey of scientific discovery. Written by Hilde Schneemann Read more about Jelena's findings in her published paper here! You can watch this simple video explaining more about chromosome linkage and polyploidy here . According to the IUCN, Sturgeon's are thought to be more critically endangered than any other group of species. To find out more about what is being done for their conservation check out the Sturgeon Specialist Group. You can watch this National Geographic video on the state of sturgeons in China.
Read more about Jelena's work on her twitter .
Since recording Jelena has started a postdoc at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre. Jelena's MEME project was conducted at the University of Montpellier II, at ISEM (Montpellier Institute of Evolutionary Sciences), in the Fish Evolution group, supervised by CNRS research director Dr Patrick Berrebi. Subscribe and listen to MEME Stream on soundcloud! Follow us on twitter! This episode is brought to you by:
Photo of Jelena during her Sturgeon MEME project (left). Picture of sturgeon by Andrey Nekrasov / WWF (middle). Jelena and Hilde after the 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 |