Project description
Understanding miniaturisation in vertebrate evolution
Miniaturisation (a reduction in body size that alters anatomy and ecology) has played a crucial role in vertebrate evolution, driven by genomic changes. The ERC-funded GEMINI project will investigate the relationship between organismal miniaturisation and genomes, focusing on how morphological changes occur. The project will create chromosome-level genomes from 20 sister species (one miniaturised and one non-miniaturised) within the subphylum Vertebrata, generating 23 genomes using advanced sequencing technologies. It will then apply cutting-edge methods in comparative evolutionary genomics to identify genetic signatures linked to miniaturisation and test hypotheses about the factors driving or limiting this phenomenon. Finally, the project will explore whether there is a common basis for digit loss in the smallest tetrapods, specifically frogs.
Objective
Miniaturisationthe evolution of such reduced body size that anatomy or ecology is substantially alteredhas been a defining force in vertebrate evolution. These changes must have a genomic basis. My ambition with GEMINI is to characterise the interplay between organismal miniaturisation and the genome, and discover how morphological transformations can arise in these organisms. To do this, I will produce a new comparative genomic paradigm in Work Package 1 (WP1) comprising chromosome-level genomes from 20 sister-pairs of miniaturised and non-miniaturised species spanning subphylum Vertebrata. Of these 40 genomes, 23 will be newly generated using the latest sequencing technologies and annotation pipelines. I will apply a host of cutting-edge methods in comparative evolutionary genomics to identify genomic signatures of miniaturisation (WP2), and test hypotheses regarding the drivers and limiters of miniaturisation (WP3) on this paradigm. I will then integrate these findings with developmental approaches to establish if there is a common basis to a classic case of convergent, miniaturisation-induced anatomical change: digit loss in the smallest tetrapods, frogs (WP4). GEMINI will dramatically change our understanding of the evolution of miniaturisation. It will set the stage for larger-scale interrogation of the evolution of novelty in metazoans, and help us understand why being small is such a big deal.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicineanatomy and morphology
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesecology
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesgeneticsgenomes
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Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
1165 Kobenhavn
Denmark