The family Pipidae represents a unique group of ancient and evolutionary conserved frogs. Due to a geographical distribution it is divided into the subfamily Pipinae with the Neotropical genus Pipa and subfamily Xenopodinae encompassing the most African species of subgenera Xenopus and Silurana. The project is focused on the study of chromosomal evolution and identification of sex determining region among mentioned genera employing FISH-TSA and Zoo-FISH and SNPs genotyping of Illumina RADseq and HiSeq sequences. Hybridization of X. tropicalis and Pipa whole-chromosomal painting probes with karyotypes of each subfamily representatives will definitively shed a new light on the evolutionary relationships among studied species. Identification of sex-linked SNPs allows the physical mapping of sex determining region in analyzed species and will contribute to the better understanding of a sex determining mechanisms based on the chromosomal rearrangements after polyploidization event.
The main aim of this project is a comparative cytogenetic and genomic analysis of geographically isolated groups of the family Pipidae encompassing four genera: Pipa, Hymenochirus, Silurana and Xenopus. Disentangling their mutual evolutionary topology via study of chromosomal rearrangements will be performed using chromosome banding, NOR detection by FISH with ribosomal gene probes and advanced cytogenetic techniques - painting FISH and Zoo-FISH employing the WCPs prepared by the laser microdissection of separately isolated S. tropicalis and Pipa sp. chromosomes. FISH-TSA of approx. one hundred Pipa cDNA probes would allow the construction of physical map and identification of inversion and/or translocation events between African and Neotropical representatives of the family Pipidae.
Deadline is closed