"Developmental Constraint and Evolution of Gene Expression in the Drosophila Embryo," will be presented by Susan Lott of the University of California-Davis at 4 p.m., Oct. 1 in E103 Beadle Center. The seminar is free and open to the public.
Animal development is a very precise and highly constrained process, critical to the fitness of the adult produced. Many mechanisms exist to reduce or eliminate the effects of variation on phenotypes. Lott's research pursues both the variation that propagates through development to produce variation in phenotype and the mechanisms that suppress this variation. One model system Lott employs to address these questions is X chromosomal dosage differences in Drosophila. Lott has found that the model species D. melanogaster has equal expression levels in females and males for many genes in the early embryo before the onset of the canonical system that compensates for differences in X chromosomal dosage, and Lott has identified a potential compensation mechanism active during this time. In other Drosophila species, Lott finds that females have twice the number of transcripts as males from the X, indicating a lack of compensation in these species during a critical period of development.
The Beadle Center is located at 1901 Vine Street. The complete schedule of seminars may be found at http://biotech.unl.edu/.