Carlos Mora: Using a vertex model to predict phenotypic variation in Drosophila melanogaster wing
- Abstract
Understanding the processes that lead particular genotypic changes to have specific phenotypic effects constitutes one of the fundamental questions of biology, the genotype-phenotype map (GPM) problem. In this project, we use the wing of Drosophila melanogaster as a model system to contrast and combine two very different ways of approaching the GPM: the quantitative genetics approach, based on the statistical patterns of inheritance of variation, and the functional approach of developmental biology, based on investigating the gene and cell interactions by which the phenotype is built. Our aim is to use a model of the wing development based on the vertex model formalism to a) study the part of the parameter space in which biologically relevant phenotypic variation is produced, b) predict the outcome of artificial selection experiments and c) reproduce variation produced under different environmental conditions.
- Key words
evolution, development, genotype-phenotype map, vertex model, Drosophila melanogaster, Drosophila wing development.