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Project Summary

Previously my research focused on developing molecular phylogenetic trees for various groups of salamanders and lizards at a variety of taxonomic levels. These trees provided the historical framework for testing evolutionary hypotheses regarding variation in life histories (Titus and Larson, 1995), morphology (Titus and Larson, 1996; Vitt et al., 1997, Frost et al., 2001), and for evaluating procedures used in DNA sequence alignment (Titus and Frost, 1996; Frost et al., 2001).

 My current research focuses on the nature of genome evolution following duplication using the zebrafish (Danio rerio) as a model system. Zebrafish linkage groups 3 and 12 share many closely related gene pairs indicating they are the result of a genome wide duplication event early in the history of teleost fishes. A zebrafish PAC library is screened for clones containing these duplicate gene pairs and the entire insert is is subjected to random subcloning and shotgun sequencing. The resulting data represent an extremely fine-grained physical map of small (100kb) duplicated regions that provide a means for addressing the following questions: 1) How has genomic organization of individual genes evolved following duplication? 2) How has gene content and gene order of smaller regions changed following duplication and how does this compare with similar changes on a larger scale? 3) Can changes in duplicated regulatory regions be identified that correlate with changes in timing and/or tissue specificity of gene expression?