Oferta TFM | ID 03

Organisms subject to high environmental variabilty need to rapidly innovate in their genes. This innovation often occurs through neofunctionalization — the emergence of new gene functions — within repetitive tandem gene clusters or “gene nurseries”.

In metazoans, such “gene nurseries” are frequently found in subtelomeric regions, while in plants they occur mainly in pericentromeric regions or in heterochromatin islands embedded within euchromatin. These regions are typically enriched in tandem gene clusters, which undergo recombination, expansion, and rearrangement, thereby generating extensive genetic diversity. This process is reminiscent of the diversity generation mechanisms in antibody production, but operates at the population level rather than within a single organism. Critical genes with clear biotechnological application such as biofilm formation, resistance to pathogens and allergenic proteins are located in such regions.

One intriguing feature of these regions is their association with repetitive DNA, yet the molecular mechanisms linking repeat content and gene diversification remain poorly understood. In this project, we will identify gene nurseries in three model systems showing high levels of neofunctionalization: Yeast, Human and Plants.We will leverage newly generated high-quality genome assemblies (and optionally resequencing data). This analysis aims to provide a comparative framework to understand how repetitive DNA contributes to the generation of gene diversity within tandem genes with different functions and genomic locations. The project aims to understand whether mechanism of neofuntionalization within repetitive regions share conserved features across species.

This project aims to:

1. Identify and characterize gene nurseries across multiple organisms known for their high levels of neofunctionalization in different gene families.
2. Explore the relationship between tandem gene clusters, repetitive elements, and genetic diversity.
3. Determine whether specific types of repeats are consistently associated with gene innovation across evolution or if these patterns are organism-specific.