Presenter(s): Hanna Minns
Faculty Mentor(s): Patrick Phillips
Poster 41
Session: Sciences
Speciation, or the process of how new species are formed, is responsible for the incredibly diverse world we live in today. Speciation develops as a result of reproductive isolation, or the inability to produce viable offspring, which is caused by an accumulation of genetic and phenotypic incompatibilities between two groups of diverging organisms. Understanding the genetic and molecular mechanisms responsible for this regulatory divergence and reproductive isolation is crucial to understanding speciation and evolutionary change (McManus, J.C., et al. 2010). To investigate this phenomenon of reproductive isolation in order to observe and understand speciation first hand, we crossed Caenorhabditis remanei to the closely related, yet recently speciated, C. latens. Using RNA-sequencing analysis, we observed the gene expression levels of both the parental species as well as the F1 population and found that there was significant differential gene expression between the two groups. More specifically, we found that a higher proportion of the differentially expressed genes were caused by cis-regulatory changes and that these genes were more likely to be downregulated in the F1s. We also found that many of these genes play a role in the formation of the ribosome complex. In conclusion, our exploration into if and how differential gene expression is acting in the offspring of these two species contributes to the growing body of work on speciation, a process that is still relatively unknown despite its vast importance in creating and maintaining our earth’s biodiversity.