Sears lab, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign : Alexa Sadier, Research work
LBMC UMR 5239, ENS-Lyon: Sophie Pantalacci, collaborator
Centre Blaise Pascal, ENS-Lyon : Emmanuel Quémener, IT resources
Since the beginning of this field in the eighties, evo-devo has led to the development of theories that explain the emergence of new structures and shape from a common set of developmental genes. The comparative study of these developmental genes expression patterns in different organs and in different species has led to the emergence of the concept of modularity. In this concept, each organ or unit in the organism can be seen as a particular developmental module that encompass a particular set of developmental genes that will be responsible for one organ or functional unit such as a wing, a limb or a tooth. These modules, while sharing sometimes the same set of developmental genes, can be seen as individual units that can act independently. This idea was already pointed out by comparative embryologists back in the XVIII century who had represented body plans as units. Considering the emergence of new features, modularity has been considered to be an important factor to facilitate adaptive or non-adaptive evolution. Comparatives analysis had thus shown that modularity can evolve among related species but also be conserved on macro evolutionary timescale.
To decipher the question of modularity, we propose to compare the transcriptome of different species of mammals in different key organs. We have chosen bats as they present a lot of different kind of adaptation in link with their various ecological niches. Since there is only one microbat genome available, the CBP will help us to analyze the transcriptome of the non-sequenced species and will give us the important computational resources that we need for the data analysis.
Emmanuel Quemener for the CBP provides a unique environment for advanced scientific computing - advice on methods, experience in RNAseq data treatment, all of which are highly beneficial to this project.