HHMI

The HHMI supports Kondrashov´s laboratory at studying fundamental questions in evolutionary biology in the broader sense, which includes everything from the mechanisms of allele fixation to the evolution of gene function and protein structure. There are three specific areas of this type of research that this grant would enable. 1) A test of the different theories on the emergence of gene duplications by sequencing polymorphisms encoded by recently fixed duplications and CNVs and a genome sequencing effort of a recent whole genome duplication event. 2) The study of the dynamics of stop codon evolution in pyrrolysine coding Methanosarcina. In addition to de novo sequencing of several strains, which is ongoing, we hope to start proteomic analysis of pyrrolysine-containing proteins. 3) The study of nuclear and mitochondrial tRNA abundance.