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A new research partnership at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln will focus on how genetic adaptations in plants and animals have helped animals evolve and withstand environmental challenges.

A four-year, $4 million National Science Foundation study will partner UNL with the University of Montana.

Species of both plants and animals can be present in vastly different local conditions, and learn to adapt to their conditions, said Jay Storz, a UNL Susan J. Rosowski professor of biological sciences.

Were looking at ways to figure out the causal connections between information encoded in the genome and the traits involved in those adaptations, he said.

The team will analyze genomes of animals and plants that have shown they can adapt to different conditions. Researchers will compare the genomes to those of the same species and of species that do not adapt to other climates to establish a link between genetic changes and environment-specific traits.

It might help you narrow down your search of the whole genome to a more targeted set of candidate genes, said Kristi Montooth, associate professor of biological sciences at UNL. If you can kind of back track from the physiology and try to match physiological changes to changes in gene expression, then you may be able to better localize in the genome what changes might be responsible for that [trait].

Colin Meiklejohn, an assistant professor of biological sciences at UNL, said this will give them the potential to help populations that are going extinct and give them the ability to survive. If there is a closely related species, scientists could breed the two species together and save a population while also potentially giving the species the ability to adapt better than before.

A yearly meeting will give researchers a chance to discuss their progress and debate questions they find during their research. Each institution will be hiring four postdoctoral researchers and full-time research assistants to help with the project. The positions will be funded by the project.

Montooth said a majority of the money from the project fund will be used toward training the next generation of evolutionary geneticists.

news@dailynebraskan.com

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UNL partners with University of Montana to study plant adaptation genetics - Daily Nebraskan

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