Scott Miller: Plasticity lost and found: cyanobacterial adaptation to novel environments
- unfortunately cancelled due to illness
- Datum: 16.03.2020
- Uhrzeit: 10:00 - 11:00
- Vortragende(r): Scott Miller from the University of Montana, Missoula, MT, USA
- For more information on the speaker, please see http://hs.umt.edu/dbs/labs/miller/
- Ort: MPI Plön
- Raum: Lecture hall
- Gastgeber: Paul Rainey
Abstract:
Many
organisms have the ability to acclimate to changing
conditions by expressing different phenotypes in different
environments (i.e., phenotypic plasticity). However,
evolutionary biologists continue to debate the importance of
plasticity for adaptation. I will present recent work in
support of a role for the evolution of plasticity during
cyanobacterial adaptation to novel environments. In one
case, the loss and refinement of ancestrally plastic
developmental variation has contributed to the increased
thermotolerance of the nitrogen-fixing cell of the
multicellular thermophile Fischerella
thermalis. By contrast, the evolution of increased
photosynthetic plasticity via horizontal transfer and gene
duplication has accompanied the colonization of a novel
animal host by the cyanobacterium Acaryochloris.
Both examples illustrate how the evolution of plasticity can
be a mechanism of cellular innovation and biological
diversification.