Alternative splicing as an evolutionary driver of phenotypic plasticity

Evolutionary change is encoded in genomes - the sequence of four nucleotides determines the biodiversity between and within species on our planet.

On the surface, genomic variation should provide us answers when we study evolution and responses to environmental change.

However, organisms with the exact same genome can exhibit highly diverse phenotypes in response to environmental factors. Such phenotypic plasticity has intrigued biologists but has been left largely unexplained.

To understand responses of populations to selection and environmental change we need to know how the genome encodes phenotypic plasticity and how it evolves.

We (and others) have theorised that genetic variation in loci affecting alternative splicing provides a substrate for phenotypic plasticity, but evidence is lacking. To study this, we need to examine extreme plasticity linked to fitness.

For your project you will use the evolutionary genetics model Drosophila melanogaster, combining long-read transcriptomes with genomics.