CAREER: Epigenetic Dynamics Shaping the Early Evolution of Duplicate Genes

University Of Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell MA

Investigators

Abstract

Gene duplication is a frequent mutational process that can help generate new biological functions. While many genes in a genome have arisen by duplication, most new duplicate genes start off as redundant genetic copies. Extra copies of genes can be potentially harmful via dosage imbalances, causing health disorders and preventing new duplicate genes from evolving new functions. Gene regulatory mechanisms that can successfully compensate for such dosage effects offer a pathway for long term duplicate gene retention and functional diversification. By studying the regulatory dynamics of duplicate genes across their early evolutionary lifespan, this research aims to evaluate the role of different epigenetic factors in modulating expression and impacting gene retention and evolution after duplication. Student participation and training is central to this project, which includes data analysis by college students, and the transfer of coding and analytical skills to high school students. Course-based undergraduate research experiences will help generate online video tutorials on genomic and computational analysis that will become publicly available resources. These will be used in the development of workshop materials for high school educators to establish genomics curricula to help strengthen genome data literacy. The regulation of a newly duplicated gene during its copy-number polymorphic phase is critical in establishing its likelihood to reach fixation and be retained over time. This project will use long-read sequencing and assembly to determine the transcriptional and epigenomic landscape of polymorphic duplicate genes among natural populations. The extent of epigenetic repression by gene age and under different selection regimes will be used to test whether epigenetic mechanisms facilitate the retention and evolution of duplicate genes before they diverge. Establishing the evolutionary dynamics of polymorphic paralogs will provide insights into the role of epigenetic modifications in regulating newly emerged genes. This award was co-funded by the Genetic Mechanisms cluster of the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences and the Evolutionary Processes cluster of the Division of Environmental Biology. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.