Meeting Abstract
The purpose of this study is to understand the role of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in eukaryote evolution. HGT is known to be widespread in prokaryotes and allows for the rapid acquisition of traits for mutation and gene duplication. HGT can explain how genes are independently transferred to multiple unrelated species. More recently, it has been found that HGT has allowed for the independent acquisition of traits in multiple distantly unrelated species in a variety of multicellular eukaryotes. In this study, HGTs will be studied to see if a gene is transferred among niche-sharing eukaryotic species. An ecological niche is a role a species has in its environment regarding how it survives, how it gains nutrition, and how it reproduces. A species’ niche includes all of its interactions with biotic and abiotic factors in its environment. The study aims to discover if HGTs are shared by related niche-sharing species and absent from more closely related, but non-niche sharing species or if HGTs provide ecologically relevant traits to their host species. In this study we used a newly designed bioinformatic pipeline to identify shared HGTs in the genome of the pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum and other phloem feeding arthropods. This will test the prediction that shared HGTs are more likely to be found in distantly related, niche sharing species than in closely related, non-niche sharing species. This research will aid in discovering the unique relationship between in niche-sharing species and their genetic makeup.
