IRFP: Robustness, Evolvability, and Reproductive Isolation in the Signal-Integration Space of Gene Regulatory Networks

Payne Joshua L, Hanover NH

Investigators

Abstract

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 environmental conditions abroad. This award will support a twenty-four month research fellowship by Dr. Joshua L. Payne to work with Dr. Andreas Wagner at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. Living organisms exhibit two seemingly paradoxical properties: They are robust to genetic change, yet highly evolvable. These properties appear contradictory because the former requires that genetic alterations leave the phenotype intact, while the latter requires these alterations to be used for the exploration of new phenotypes. Despite this apparent contradiction, several empirical analyses of living systems, particularly at the molecular scale, have revealed that robustness often facilitates evolvability. This project uses computational models of genetic regulation to characterize the relationship between robustness and evolvability in gene regulatory networks when genetic alterations affect the signal-integration logic encoded in cis-regulatory regions. As evolvability is intimately tied to the formation of new phenotypes, this project also focuses on the relationship between evolvability and the evolution of reproductive isolation, a topic of central importance in evolutionary biology. This award will shed insight into the relationship between robustness and evolvability in biological systems and will provide valuable interdisciplinary research experience to several undergraduate and graduate students involved in the project, which will benefit the international scientific community at large. In addition, Dr. Payne will gain experience in a highly regarded foreign laboratory, which will lead to sustained collaborations that cross national boundaries and a broadened perspective of the scientific endeavor.