International Research Fellowship Program: Evolutionary Reproductive Genomics in Humans and Great Apes

Good Jeffrey M, Tucson AZ

Investigators

Abstract

0754461 Good The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct nine to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad. This award will support a twenty-four month research fellowship by Dr. Jeffrey Good to work with Dr. Svante Paabo at Max Planck Institute in Germany. Genes involved in reproduction often evolve very rapidly in animals, yet the evolutionary forces driving this divergence remain poorly understood. Theory predicts that the evolution of reproduction-related characters within a species should be strongly influenced by the underlying mating system, with the most rapid evolutionary divergence occurring in species where females frequently mate with multiple males. This hypothesis has not been broadly tested at the molecular level. Strikingly different mating systems occur among closely related species of great apes (including humans), providing a powerful system to test the influence of mating behavior on the evolution of reproductive genes. This research project combines high-throughput sequencing of DNA, evolutionary genetic analyses, and detailed knowledge of primate biology to address fundamental questions on the molecular evolution of male reproduction. There are two primary objectives of this study. First, patterns of genetic variation in populations of bonobos (Pan paniscus) and gorillas (Gorilla gorilla) are being characterized to infer the demographic history of these species, thereby enabling the use of statistical models designed to detect positive natural selection. Second, patterns of molecular evolution are being described for a large set of male reproductive genes in population samples of bonobos, gorillas, and humans. These three closely related species show very different mating systems with the highest levels of female re-mating found in bonobos. Thus, genetic data are being used to test if male reproductive genes in bonobos are subject to a greater intensity and frequency of positive selection relative to gorillas and humans. Moreover, these data are being used to infer which general aspects of mammalian male reproduction are subject to the most intense evolutionary pressures across these species. This study is refining our understanding of basic evolutionary processes, male reproductive biology, and the genetic changes that underlie adaptive divergence between humans and our closest relatives.