Evolution of meiosis in eukaryotes

• Grant number: 17/04391-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Effective date (Start): July 12, 2017
• Effective date (End): July 11, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Genetics - Molecular Genetics and Genetics of Microorganisms
• Principal Investigator: Daniel José Galafasse Lahr
• Grantee: Paulo Gonzalez Hofstatter
• Supervisor: Andrew James Roger
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biociências (IB). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Research place: Dalhousie University, Canada
• Associated to the scholarship: 15/06306-0 - Evolution of meiosis and sex in Amoebozoa, BP.DR

Abstract

The discovery of a toolkit of genes with specific meiotic functions has lead to investigations on the occurrence and evolution of sex in diverse eukaryotic lineages. Remarkably, this toolkit has enabled studying meiosis even among those lineages long considered to be asexual in their life cycles. The product of those genes, namely SPO11, DMC1, REC8, MSH4/MSH5, HOP1, HOP2, MND1, MER3 and others play basic roles on meiotic processes and are expressed only during meiosis. Most of them are duplicated or a result of duplication events and may have their origins traced back to two sources: Archaea (via vertical inheritance) and Eubacteria (via endosymbiotic gene transfer from mitochondrion to nucleus). Ongoing efforts in understanding the patterns of distribution and evolution of eukaryotic meiosis are based on molecular databases resulting from high throughput sequencing and the bioinformatic processing of such data. The high level of data complexity and the large volume of information available require the construction of specific bioinformatic pipelines for this purpose. Besides, complex statistical-mathematical models were developed to evaluate different aspects of the available data, including strength of phylogenetic signal for a given geological time, molecular dating of evolutionary events and methods to evaluate the statistical support for evolutionary relationships produced for reconstruction techniques. In order to achieve up-to-date skills to respond promptly to relevant questions arising from the frontiers of evolutionary science and to yield a reasonable analysis to the frequent increase of data international collaboration is of fundamental importance, which justify the current proposal.

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

HOFSTATTER, PAULO G.; LAHR, DANIEL J. G.. Complex Evolution of the Mismatch Repair System in Eukaryotes is Illuminated by Novel Archaeal Genomes. Journal of Molecular Evolution, v. 89, n. 1-2, JAN 2021. (17/04391-5)

HOFSTATTER, PAULO G.; LAHR, DANIEL J. G.. All Eukaryotes Are Sexual, unless Proven Otherwise: Many So-Called Asexuals Present Meiotic Machinery and Might Be Able to Have Sex. BIOESSAYS, v. 41, n. 6, JUN 2019. (15/06306-0, 13/04585-3, 17/04391-5)