The emergence of evolutionary novelties: testing genetic and environmental effects using the ciliate Paramecium

• Applicant: Dr. Francesco Catania
• Subject Area: Evolutionary Cell and Developmental Biology (Zoology) ; Evolution, Anthropology
• Term: from 2014 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 264304652

• Final Report Year: 2018

Final Report Abstract

The project enabled me to address questions related to the emergence of functional genetic novelties. Our findings further mechanistic understanding of splicing and shed light on the interactions between DNA splicing and the epigenetic machinery (in Paramecium) as well as RNA splicing and other co-transcriptional processes (in eukaryotes). We gained novel insights on the effects of environmental changes on DNA-level splicing efficiency. We were able to demonstrate that environmental changes can affect the emergence of DNA splicing variants, a finding which has significant trans-disciplinary implications. Additionally, these environmentally-induced variants may be evolutionary significant as they are potentially transmittable to subsequent sexual generations. Finally, we began to investigate adaptive responses to environmental stress as a function of the degree of sexual maturation, growth rate, age, and population density. The intriguing preliminary results that we obtained call for additional investigation.

Publications

• (2015). Cis-acting signals modulate the efficiency of programmed DNA elimination in Paramecium tetraurelia. Nucleic Acids Research. 43(17): 8157-8168
  D. Ferro, G. Lepennetier, and F. Catania
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkv843)
• (2015). On the path to genetic novelties: insights from programmed DNA elimination and RNA splicing, WIREs RNA. 6(5): 547-561
  F. Catania and J. Schmitz
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1002/wrna.1293)
• (2017). Exploring the Impact of Cleavage and Polyadenylation Factors on Pre-mRNA Splicing Across Eukaryotes. G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics. 7(7): 2107-2114
  G. Lepennetier, and F. Catania
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1534/g3.117.041483)
• (2017). From intronization to intron loss: How the interplay between mRNA-associated processes can shape the architecture and the expression of eukaryotic genes. Int J Biochem Cell Biol. 91: 136-144
  F. Catania
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocel.2017.06.017)