H2020Индивидуална стипендия2021–2023

MitoNuEco · The role of mitonuclear interactions in thermal and dietary adaptation

„Хоризонт 2020“ — Действия „Мария Склодовска-Кюри“

Период: 2021-10-01 → 2023-10-28
Финансиране от ЕС: 224 934 €
Участници: 1
Схема: MSCA-IF

Линиите свързват координатора с партньорите.

Накратко на български

Взаимодействията между ядрената и митохондриалната ДНК се проучват чрез примери с плодови мухи от тропически и умерени райони. Това помага да се разбере как генетичната съвместимост влияе върху адаптацията на животните към промените в храната и температурата.

Този кратък обзор е генериран от изкуствен интелект

Кратко обяснение, генерирано от езиков модел по текста на CORDIS. Оригиналът е по-долу.

Резултати накратко

The role of mitonuclear interactions in thermal and dietary adaptation

Life depends on the energy provided by tiny cell organelles called mitochondria. Despite its importance, mitochondrial function is vulnerable as it relies on genes coded by two different genomes, the mitochondrial and the nuclear DNA. Even subtle incompatibilities between these sets of genes can be catastrophic for organisms, affecting energy production and fitness. Our current uncertain climate is marked by more frequent shifts in temperature and food availability. All these drastic alterations are predicted to affect mitochondrial functionality. Climate change is also causing populations to migrate and overlap, raising an additional challenge for the persistence of biological communities - intergenomic compatibility. As isolated populations often diverge in mitochondrial functionality and coadapted gene combinations, genomic admixture can have severe consequences if population-specific mitochondrial and nuclear genes are incompatible. This leads me to the question: how far genomic match determines animals' adaptability to changing environments? This project explored the dynamics of mitonuclear coevolution and the consequences these interactions bring in the context of climatic change. Specifically, I examined how the combination of genetic and ecological stressors impact organismal performance in natural fruitfly populations. Fly populations consisted in two parental lines adapted to either tropical or temperate environments, plus their reciprocal mitonuclear-decoupled cybrid lines. The combined impact of mitonuclear gene combination, sex, temperature and diet was tested at the level of mitochondrial functionality, gene expression, and organismal performance. The results of this project suggest that intergenomic interactions, coupled with thermal and dietary stress, significantly affect energy production and crucial aspects of fitness, with implications for future adaptation and persistence of insect populations.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз

Цел на проекта

Mitochondria play a key role in energy metabolism through cellular respiration and provision of carbon skeletons for biosynthetic pathways, and act as gatekeepers for stress and cell death pathways such as apoptosis. The balance of these processes depends on the correct interaction between two different genomes, the mitochondrial and the nuclear genomes. As demonstrated by hybridization events, the cost of mitonuclear mismatches is metabolic dysfunction and potentially severe fitness loss. Temperature and dietary regimes are also well-known metabolic stressors influencing mitochondrial functions, metabolomic network structure and gene expression. Hence their variation can exacerbate mitonuclear incompatibilities.Understanding the ability of animals to face the potential modification of their habitats is of vital importance. Climate change predictions estimate an increase in temperature and its variability, changes in in food web structures and in the distribution of populations. Events that may generate mitonuclear mismatches (such as hybridization between separate populations) are therefore expected to increase in frequency following the shifts in thermal niches.The objective of this research is to test how far mitonuclear interactions contribute to thermal and dietary adaptation or breakdown in changing environments. Drosophila melanogaster is a leading model system to examine mito-nuclear interactions and adaptation. I will specifically employ experimental fly lines characterized by mitonuclear match and mismatch to investigate how temperature and diet modulation impact the major fitness effects of mitonuclear incompatibilities. This will be tested at the level of mitochondrial functions, gene expression and life-history trade-offs. The proposed project will be unique in its field, providing fundamental insights into how genetic and environmental factors interactions might translate to ecological population dynamics in a mutating world.

Оригинален текст от CORDIS (на английски).

Участници

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON · LondonКоординаторОбединеното кралство