Linking phenotypic differences between species to differences in genes and cis-regulatory elements

Date

Feb 21, 2019

Time

11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Speaker

Dr. Michael Hiller

Affiliation

Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems Center for Systems Biology Dresden

Language

en

Main Topic

Biologie

Other Topics

Biologie, Medizin

Host

Dr. Maximina Yun

Description

AbstractThe main mission of my group is to address a fundamental question in genetics and evolutionary biology: What is the genomic basis of phenotypic differences between species? By focusing explicitly on differences between species rather than on differences within a species, our work aims at revealing the genomic differences underlying macroevolutionary change, which is an important aspect to understand how nature's phenotypic diversity evolved.To address this question, we combine the development of computational methods to detect evolutionary changes in functional genomic regions, with large-scale comparative genomics to discover associations between genomic and phenotypic changes, and experiments in vitro, in cells and in model organisms. Applying these approaches to mammalian and reptile genomes has led to many novel insights into the genomic basis underlying morphological, physiological and metabolic adaptations in mammals and reptiles. Papers * Hecker N, Sharma V, Hiller M. Convergent gene losses illuminate metabolic and physiological changes in herbivores and carnivores. PNAS, doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1818504116, 2019 * Roscito JG, Sameith K, Parra G, Langer BE, Petzold A, Moebius C, Bickle M, Rodrigues MT, Hiller M. Phenotype loss is associated with widespread divergence of the gene regulatory landscape in evolution. Nature Communications, 9:4737, 2018 * Lee JH, Lewis KM, Moural TW, Kirilenko B, Bogdanova B, Prange G, Koessl M, Huggenberger S, Kang C, and Hiller M. Molecular parallelism in fast-twitch muscle proteins in echolocating mammals. Science Adv, 4(9), eaat9660, 2018 * Sharma V, Lehmann T, Stuckas H, Funke L, and Hiller M. Loss of RXFP2 and INSL3 genes in Afrotheria shows that testicular descent is the ancestral condition in placental mammals. PLoS Biology 16(6), e2005293, 2018 * Sharma V, Hecker N, Roscito JG, Foerster L, Langer BE, and Hiller M. A genomics approach reveals insights into the importance of gene losses for mammalian adaptations. Nature Communications, 9(1), 1215, 2018

Links

• to announcement of the organizer

Last modified: Feb 21, 2019, 1:05:41 AM