POSTPONED GEE Seminar - Professor Aoife Mc Lysaght, Trinity College Dublin

Academic Host: Adam Rutherford
Abstract: Whole genome duplication (polyploidy) is a rare but dramatic genomic upheaval that has been credited with creating the conditions for great evolutionary innovation and adaptation, most famously around the origin of vertebrates. The possible short- and long-term benefits of polyploidy are hotly-debated, and one increasingly popular hypothesis links genome duplication to adaptive benefits during dramatic environmental upheavals that are responsible for otherwise mass extinctions. Some of our recent work showed that the complex nature of rediploidisation masked a shared polyploidy in the sturgeon and paddlefish lineages, thus revising the date backwards in time to a period coinciding with the Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction. Furthermore, we have directly tested the immediate effects of polyploidy in an animal for the first time, comparing diploid and neotetraploid C. elegans under regular and stressful conditions, revealing a clear advantage for tetraploids in stress resilience.