GENETICS PLASTICITY · The genetics of plasticity and canalization in Drosophila

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Project objective

The success of Evo-devo has boosted the interest in the relationship between genotypes and phenotypes. This in turn makes biologists aware of the importance of the environmental effects for genetic and evolutionary studies. The developmental processes involved in the control of environmental sensitivity, namely, phenotypic plasticity and its counterpart, canalisation, have therefore attracted much attention from evolutionary biologists in the past decade.Plasticity is the ability of an organism to produce a different phenotype in different environments whereas canalisation refers to the ability to remain phenotypically constant in spite of varying conditions. Remarkably, the genetic and developmental bases of phenotypic plasticity and canalisation remain in most cases obscure. Instead of the classic strategy consisting in looking for QTLs and inferring potential corresponding genes, I suggest a different approach. I propose to investigate the genetic basis of plasticity and canalisation in a model whose development is known in great detail, the Drosophila wing, allowing us to test directly for the implication of known genes in environmental sensitivity. I will develop an approach combining the use of candidate genes and the powerful and flexible tools of geometric morphometrics, with a design involving environmental manipulation of wild-derived inbred lines.I suggest this will allow:(1) to understand the genetic bases of phenotypic plasticity and canalisation and their variation in the wild;(2) to characterize the relationships between these two developmental processes(3) to precise the status of the buffering of developmental noise (measured by fluctuating symmetry (FA)) in regard of plasticity and canalisation.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

• MUSEUM NATIONAL D'HISTOIRE NATURELLE · PARISCoordinatorFrance

Links

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