1. Goal: Establish Aquilegia as an evolutionary model system 70 taxa (diverse in floral morphology & ecology) recent & rapid radiation (little genetic variation & successful hybrid formation) diploid (n=7), small genome (1C=320-400Mbp) basal lineage in the eudicots Claudia Voelckel PostDoc University of California Santa Barbara Ecology, Evolution & Marine Biology Supervised by Prof. Scott A. Hodges Reproductive isolation & speciation in Columbines (Aquilegia) Requires: Development of molecular resources EST database (TIGR) (microarrays for both expression & genotyping studies) physical map of the Aquilegia genome transformation system to manipulate candidate gene expression

2. Molecular Basis of Convergent Evolution or How Does Evolution Repeat Itself? 7 independent losses of floral anthocyanins... What are the genes driving anthocyanin loss? Relative importance of structural versus regulatory mutations? Are the molecular mechanisms of a convergent phenotype convergent themselves?

3. Are the molecular mechanisms of a convergent phenotyp convergent themselves? Tools: Expression surveys (ABP loci & their trans-regulators) throughout the phylogeny Localize ABP & regulatory loci on a genetic map (Does any of them map to a QTL for flower color?) Compare alleles of ABP & regulatory loci from colored & colorless Aquilegia species 5 possible scenarios leading to anthocyanin loss: A+ anthocyanins present A- anthocyanins absent R regulator ABP anthocyanin biosynthetic pathway X mutation expression

4. Questions? Picture taken from http://portalproductions.com/h/