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PhD Defense by Wen Xu

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In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of 

 

Doctor of Philosophy in Biology

in the 

School of Biological Sciences

 

Wen Xu

 

will defend her dissertation

 

Nematodes Adapt Using Yin-yang Isoforms of a NURF Subunit

 

Tuesday, March 19th, 2019

9:00 AM

Engineered Biosystems Building (EEB)

Children's Healthcare of Atlanta Seminar Room

 

 

Thesis Advisor:

Dr. Patrick T. McGrath

School of Biological Sciences

Georgia Institute of Technology

 

Committee members: 

Dr. Jeffrey T. Streelman

School of Biological Sciences

Georgia Institute of Technology

 

Dr. Greg Gibson

School of Biological Sciences

Georgia Institute of Technology

 

Dr. Annalise B. Paaby

School of Biological Sciences

Georgia Institute of Technology

 

Dr. David Katz

Department of Cell Biology

Emory University

 

 


 

Summary

 

Convergent or parallel evolution is the repeated evolution of the same genotype in independent populations in response to similar environmental changes. A growing number of examples of parallel evolution are accumulating in the literature (e.g. cis-regulatory changes in the shavenbaby developmental regulator in Drosophila species result in dorsal cuticle hair loss (Sucena & Stern 2000), repeated selection on the Eda TNF ligand causes stickleback low-plated phenotype (Colosimo et al. 2005), and deletion of chemoreceptor genes contribute to the insensitivity to a specific pheromone in Caenorhabditis species (McGrath et al. 2011)). In this dissertation, I will discuss my studies of how Caenorhabditis elegans strains adapt to laboratory environments. I will describe how two C. elegans strains N2 and LSJ2, who share a common ancestor but have evolved independently in laboratory conditions have increased fitness in their respective environment. I will show that part of adaptation in the LSJ2 strain is caused by a 60 bp deletion in nurf-1 gene, a subunit of nucleosome remodeling factor NURF. Next, I will describe my finding about that adaptation of the N2 lineage is partially caused by a SNV in the 2nd intron of nurf-1. This work suggests that nurf-1 is a common target of evolution in response to laboratory growth. Finally, I will describe my work to understand why nurf-1 might be targeted, which I propose is due to the antagonistic function (here I refer as Yin-yang) of two major nurf-1 isoforms on the sexual fate during gametogenesis. My doctoral thesis study advance our understanding of how nucleosome remodeling factor may work and that isoform-level study of complex genes is feasible and necessary.

Status

  • Workflow Status:Published
  • Created By:Tatianna Richardson
  • Created:03/05/2019
  • Modified By:Tatianna Richardson
  • Modified:03/05/2019

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