Rapid increase in frequency of gene copy-number variants during adaptive evolution in experimental Caenorhabditis elegans populations

ABSTRACT: Gene copy-number variation, which provides the raw material for the evolution of novel genes, is surprisingly widespread in natural populations. Experimental evolution studies have demonstrated an extremely high spontaneous rate of origin of gene duplications. When organisms are suboptimally adapted to their environment, gene duplication may compensate for reduced fitness by amplifying promiscuous activity of a gene, or increasing dosage of a suboptimal gene. The overarching goal of this study is to inverstigate whether CNVs constitute a common mechanism of adaptive genetic change during compensatory evolution and to further characterize the role of natural selection in dictating their evolutionary spread at a population-genomic level. Outcrossing populations of C. elegans with low fitnes

ORGANISM(S): Caenorhabditis elegans

SUBMITTER: Ulfar Bergthorsson 

PROVIDER: E-GEOD-67871 | biostudies-arrayexpress |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-arrayexpress