Francesco Paparazzo

From EESwiki

Host-Parasite Coevolution in Drosophila melanogaster

The goal of the project is to gain insight into the evolution of the innate immunity genes in Drosophila melanogaster. We develop population genetics methods to detect genes involved in host-parasite coevolution and that have been under recent selection. We are particularly interested in the type of selection acting on these genes and in the distinction of the resulting coevolutionary scenarios (e.g. trench warfare vs. arms race). Therefore, we plan to infect Drosophila melanogaster populations coming from distinct localities (Africa, Asia and Europe) with multiple geographically diverse strains of the pathogenic fungus Beauveria bassiana. Then we perform microarray experiments to investigate the transcriptional response to infection and to identify immunity genes which present expression patterns indicative of natural selection. We sequence the candidate genes to obtain DNA polymorphisms from our populations and we apply our statistical methods to these data and to polymorphism data obtained from previous genome scans.

Supervisor: Wolfgang Stephan