E&E seminar will be from Hannah Assour from the Ashman/Turcotte lab will be presenting their research titled:
Title: More Genomes, More Problems? How Stress Shapes Polyploid Success
Friday, February 26, 2025
A219B Langley Hall
12:00 PM
Whole-genome duplication, or polyploidy, is a major driver of evolutionary change in flowering plants. However, the evolutionary significance and enduring population-level effects of polyploidy, especially long-term, remain unclear. Further, ecological stress may contribute to polyploid plants’ success by providing them a competitive advantage, but field tests of this theory at a multi-generational scale are rare. To address these knowledge gaps, I conducted a long-term competition experiment between genetically diverse populations of diploids and polyploids, with or without the presence of an environmental stressor, using a manipulative field study. Further, to try and reveal the molecular mechanisms behind the historically observed increased stress tolerance of polyploids, I propose an RNA-sequencing experiment to analyze the polyploid and diploid duckweed transcriptomes (or gene readouts) across different treatments and genetic backgrounds.