Stickleback CEGS

Like humans, stickleback fish have migrated, colonized, and adapted to a variety of new environmental conditions in the recent past. Populations with dramatic differences in morphology, physiology, and behavior can still be crossed using artificial fertilization in the laboratory, providing a powerful system for studying the genetic basis of evolutionary change in natural populations. We have pioneered the development of molecular tools for studying the genetic basis of stickleback evolution in lakes and streams around the world. Using a combination of genome-wide linkage mapping, chromosome walking, and transgenic rescue methods we have previously identified the genetic basis of two major skeletal traits, pelvic reduction and armor plate patterning. Remarkably, the genetic mechanisms we have found controlling adaptive traits are reused when similar traits have evolved in widely separate geographic locations, and in other species diverged by millions of years. Here we will expand the stickleback approach to a large number of different traits and tested for general mechanisms of evolutionary change across a broad range of animals, including humans.

The long-term goal of the CEGS project is to understand the genomic mechanisms that generate phenotypic diversity in vertebrates. Despite a wealth of genomic data in higher organisms, we still knew relatively little about the number, location, and type of mutations that control differences in physiology, form, and behavior in nature. Here we will use an emerging fish model system to characterize the genetic architecture and molecular basis of evolving new traits in natural populations.

For more information on the Stickleback CEGS project, you can download the following journal publications:

  • Kingsley DM, Zhu B, Osoegawa K, de Jong PJ, Schein J, Marra M, Peichel C, Amemiya C, Schluter D, Balabhadra S, Friedlander B, Cha YM, Dickson M, Grimwood J, Schmutz J, Talbot WS, Myers RM. (2004). New Genomic Tools for Molecular Studies of Evolutionary Change in Threespine Sticklebacks. Behaviour. 141:1331-44. (PDF)
  • Colosimo PF, Hosemann KE, Balabhadra S, Villarreal G, Jr., Dickson M, Grimwood J, Schmutz J, Myers RM, Schluter D, Kingsley DM. (2005). Widespread parallel evolution in sticklebacks by repeated fixation of Ectodysplasin alleles. Science. 307(5717):1928-33. (PDF)
  • Kitano J, Ross JA, Mori S, Kume M, Jones FC, Chan YF, Absher DM, Grimwood J, Schmutz J, Myers RM, Kingsley DM, Peichel CL. (2009). A role for a neo-sex chromosome in stickleback speciation. Nature. 461(7267):1079-83. (PDF)
  • Chan YF, Marks ME, Jones FC, Villarreal G, Jr., Shapiro MD, Brady SD, Southwick AM, Absher DM, Grimwood J, Schmutz J, Myers RM, Petrov D, Jonsson B, Schluter D, Bell MA, Kingsley DM. (2010). Adaptive evolution of pelvic reduction in sticklebacks by recurrent deletion of a Pitx1 enhancer. Science. 327(5963):302-5.  (PDF)

 

This work is funded by the NIH Centers of Excellence in Genomic Science (CEGS)  under grant No. P50 HG002568