Regulatory systems and the evolution of self-incompatibility in the flowering plants

Vincent castric

Unite Evo-Eco-Paleo (EEP), CNRS / Universite de Lille, France
vincent.castric@univ-lille.fr

Link to onsite registration: https://duo.dr13.cnrs.fr/public/evenement/inscription/743/grandpublic

Link to online seminar: https://umontpellier-fr.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_xhKo_KVCTX-27KwNu8fXHQ

Many lineages of flowering plants prevent selfing and enforce outcrossing by means of genetic self-incompatibility, a textbook example of natural (balancing) selection. In the Brassicaceae, self-incompatibility is controlled by a highly diversified series of molecular lock-and-key combinations that form a striking dominance hierarchy. The question of how the many lock-and-key combina-tions could arise in the first place and then establish a complex network of dominance/recessivity interactions raises several interesting theoretical and mechanistic problems. In contrast, in the Ole-aceae, only two allelic specificities have remained stable over many million years, suggesting a complete lack of diversification. In this presentation, I will detail how the study of these relatively simple and experimentally tractable biological systems can provide insight into the broader issue of how functional and regulatory novelty can arise in natural populations, and how these processes influence the evolution of reproductive systems.

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