Date: January 13, 2017
Source: University of Chicago
Medical Center
Scientists at the University of
Chicago have created the first genetically modified animals containing
reconstructed ancient genes, which they used to test the evolutionary effects
of genetic changes that happened in the deep past on the animals' biology and
fitness.
The research, published early
online in Nature Ecology & Evolution on Jan. 13, is a major step forward
for efforts to study the genetic basis of adaptation and evolution. The
specific findings, involving the fruit fly's ability to break down alcohol in
rotting fruit, overturn a widely-held hypothesis about the molecular causes of
one of evolutionary biology's classic cases of adaptation.
"One of the major goals of
modern evolutionary biology is to identify the genes that caused species to
adapt to new environments, but it's been hard to do that directly, because
we've had no way to test the effects of ancient genes on animal biology,"
said Mo Siddiq, a graduate student in the Department of Ecology and Evolution
at the University of Chicago, one of the study's lead scientists.
"We realized we could
overcome this problem by combining two recently developed methods --
statistical reconstruction of ancient gene sequences and engineering of
transgenic animals," he said.
Until recently, most studies of
molecular adaptation have analyzed gene sequences to identify "signatures
of selection" -- patterns suggesting that a gene changed so quickly during
its evolution that selection is likely to have been the cause. The evidence
from this approach is only circumstantial, however, because genes can evolve
quickly for many reasons, such as chance, fluctuations in population size, or
selection for functions unrelated to the environmental conditions to which the
organism is thought to have adapted.
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