Meeting Abstract
Animal muscles are exceptionally diverse in structure and function as they meet a variety of demands for an individual’s survival. Through natural selection, muscles develop to meet these demands. Additionally, however, individual muscles may vary in gene expression to best suit each of their roles in promoting organism survival. Anolis lizards display remarkable diversity in terms of number of species, ecotypes, and geographic locations into which they have radiated. Additionally, their muscles have been shown to exhibit variation in performance (e.g., peak contractile velocity) among muscle types. Specifically, the contractile performance of jaw and leg muscles, likely influenced by natural selection because of their use in survival (e.g. to escape predation and to bite prey), have been shown to vary both across and within individuals. However, the differences in the molecular mechanisms underlying the variation of the metabolic and mechanical properties between the jaw and leg muscles are largely unknown. Here, we used RNA-seq to measure gene expression of jaw and leg muscles from Anolis lizards. Gene networks have been identified differentiating the two types of muscles. This data may allow us in the future to compare gene expression differences between the muscles with differences in muscle (e.g. twitch time and peak contractile velocity) and whole-organism (e.g. bite force and sprint speed) performance to elucidate the molecular mechanisms that create variation in performance in anoles.
