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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 21: Population Dynamics and Evolution
BP 21.2: Vortrag
Donnerstag, 26. März 2009, 17:45–18:00, HÜL 186
Life on the Edge: Gene Surfing in Microorganisms — •Oskar Hallatschek1,2 and David R. Nelson2 — 1Max Planck Institut für Dynamik und Selbstorganisation, Bunsenstr. 10, 37073 Göttingen — 2Lyman Laboratory of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138
It is widely appreciated that population waves have played a crucial role in the evolutionary history of many species. Genetic footprints of many pioneer species are still recognizable today, and neutral genetic markers can be used to infer information about growth, ancestral population size, colonization pathways, etc. Bacterial growth on a Petri dish can be used to model this phenomenon, using the change of a single amino acid residue in a fluorescent protein encoded on a plasmid as a marker. The frontier of acts as a moving genetic bottleneck, and neutral mutations optimally positioned on the edge of a growing population wave can increase their abundance via a "surfing" phenomenon. Striking patterns of gene segregation and lineage histories are observed for both radial and linear inoculations of populations of bacteria and yeast. Recent experimental and theoretical studies of this effect will be presented, using bacteria and yeast as model systems, including results for surfing of deleterious and favorable mutations during range expansions.[1] O. Hallatschek and D. R. Nelson, http://arxiv.org/abs/0810.0053, and references therein.