The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) has announced £20 million of funding for four major collaborative projects, including one involving the Department of Biology, University of Oxford. The project tackles one of the biggest unsolved puzzles in evolutionary biology: it has long been known that sometimes in evolution the entire DNA sequence of a species becomes doubled, yet precisely how these events then lead to new gene functions is less clear.
In earlier work, Professor Peter Holland (Oxford Biology) and Professor Dan Macqueen (then University of Aberdeen, now Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh) independently discovered that once the genome has been doubled it can take a surprisingly long time – many millions of years – before the two identical sets of genes evolve into new and different genes in an animal.
This discovery laid the groundwork for the newly awarded £5.3 million funded project: a collaboration between Professor Macqueen, Professor Holland, and researchers in Bristol, Bath, Edinburgh, Kew Gardens, and the Wellcome Sanger Institute. The new project will examine how the hidden potential of genome duplication events is unlocked during evolution, establishing key processes that underpin the origins of adaptation, biological complexity, and species diversity.
Professor Peter Holland said:
"The human genome sequence went through complete duplications in our distant history, as did the genomes of many crop plants, and some less studied groups such as spiders and snails. Our collaboration will examine the process right across the tree of life, aiming to discover how, when, and why new gene functions arise in evolution."
Project leader Professor Dan Macqueen added:
“Whole genome duplications are a major but incompletely understood facet of the evolutionary story of many species – this project aims to uncover important new insights into the mechanisms by which these key events have shaped life on Earth.”
To read more about BBSRC’s funding, visit: https://www.ukri.org/news/bbsrc-injects-20-million-into-long-term-discovery-research/
