MAERO · Molecular adaptation in ecologically relevant organisms
FP6 — Marie Curie Actions (Human Resources and Mobility)
- Duration
- 2006-12-01 → 2009-11-30
- EU contribution
- €789,641
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- TOK
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Final Activity Report Summary - MAERO (Molecular adaptation in ecologically relevant organisms)
The MAERO project aimed to exploit recent advances in genomics tools to help understand evolution and how organisms adapt to their environment. Four fellows were recruited, each of whom worked on a different study system: Littorina saxatilis, Arabidopsis lyrata, Soay sheep and passerine birds, especially the zebra finch Taenipoygia guttata. The project was successful in that all four fellows developed their population genomics/bioinformatics skills which they have used to gain further employment in academic research. The University of Sheffield has been left in a much stronger position to perform work of this nature. Publications in high-impact journals have arisen from the work, with more expected in the next two years. The PI and co-Is continue to collaborate with the fellows.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Determining the genetic basis of evolutionary change in the wild is key to our understanding of how natural selection operates, how species adapt to environmental change (including anthropogenic change), and of what determines the extent of a species range. Genomics resources, both technology and information, are becoming available at an exponential rate, such that it is now possible to perform sophisticated genetic analysis of ecologically-relevant organisms.Frequently, this involves modification of methodologies developed in the context of human genetics, or genetics of other model organisms, requiring new connections between disciplines and offering new synergies. Analyses need to be developed that test specific alternative hypotheses, often in the framework of explicit models, requiring interdisciplinary input from field biologists, molecular ecologists, statisticians, bioinformaticians and theoreticians.Members of the Department of Animal & Plant Sciences are using genomics tools to understand the evolution of fitness-related traits in natural populations of vertebrates, marine gastropods, angiosperms, invertebrates and amphibians. In many species we have determined the chromosomal regions, or even individual genes, that are responsible for adaptively important genetic variation. However, to obtain a clear understanding of how natural selection has shaped variation at these genes requires expertise in bioinformatics, the analysis of DNA sequence variation and the modeling of molecular evolution.This project will seek to build on our recent discoveries by providing the opportunity for European statistical geneticists and bioinformaticians to analyze ecologically-relevant data sets, while enhancing the host institution's capability in this timely area of evolutionary genetics. Furthermore, new networks between evolutionary biologists and statistical geneticists will be established within the EU.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD · SHEFFIELDCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
- UNIVERSITY OF AARHUS · AARHUS CDenmark
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union