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Tuesday "Noon" Seminar: Feb. 20, 2007Tovah Salcedo on "Evolutionary genetics of innate immunity in house mice"
12:30-1:45 p.m. in Biosciences West (map of building location), Room 208 |
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Talk Abstract Genes involved in the immune response tend to evolve more rapidly than other classes of genes in the genomes of diverse eukaryotes, including house mice, Mus domesticus. This suggests that selection may be driving the evolution of these genes. However, it remains unclear whether diversifying selection or directional selection is responsible for this pattern, particularly for the innate immune system of vertebrates. The innate immune response does not change over the course of an organism’s lifetime, in contrast to acquired immune defenses, which are able to improve during an initial infection and during subsequent infections with a previously encountered pathogen. My dissertation is investigating the population genetic processes producing the species-level evolutionary pattern of rapid evolution at immunity genes in a population of M. domesticus from Tucson, AZ. I am currently characterizing genetic diversity in these wild mice at neutral loci and at genes involved in innate immunity. In this talk, I will discuss progress towards describing nucleotide variability for genes that have previously been associated with specific pathogens in laboratory experiments using inbred lines of mice, and compare this with current data from neutral loci. |
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