Correlated Evolution of Teleost Fish Rhodopsin with Habitat: Linking Molecular Changes to Ecology
Year: 2015
Type: dissertation
Abstract: A critical challenge in molecular evolutionary biology is to determine how changes in protein coding sequence correlate with ecology, physiology, or morphology. While statistical approaches aiming to investigate signatures of selection at the molecular level have been developed, methods designed to correlate these findings with macroscopic traits remain understudied. Here, I investigated amino acid replacements in the visual pigment rhodopsin (RH1) of teleost fishes that show significant association with shifts in habitat, using both existing phylogenetic comparative methods, as well as novel implementation of sequence simulations and ancestral reconstructions. Through an unbiased examination of amino acid sites in RH1, I found several substitutions that are known to affect spectral sensitivity or other properties of rhodopsin. Thirteen additional control genes showed markedly weaker associations between amino acid substitutions and habitat compared with teleost RH1. The framework established in this thesis can similarly be used to study other genes and macroscopic traits.
Source: TSpace (University of Toronto)
Author: Amir-Arsalan Sabouhanian
Language: English
Subfield: Genetics
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2781089637