Schedule

Uncovering the regulatory mechanisms underlying pigment pattern diversity in striped rodents

Across the animal kingdom, periodic pigmentation patterns (stripes, spots, etc.) are diverse, adaptively significant, and labile traits that arise from an incredibly varied array of developmental and cellular mechanisms. Given their prevalence, visual accessibility, and diversity, these pigmentation patterns are a powerful system with which to ask questions about how pre-existing developmental mechanisms constrain evolution, and at what mechanistic levels independently evolved and diverse patterning traits converge. While these mechanisms have been partially decoded in some model species, mammalian coat patterns have remained particularly challenging to interrogate. Here, using two distantly related rodent species with unambiguously independent origins of remarkably distinct coat patterns, I dissect the developmental and gene regulatory mechanisms that underly pattern diversity across rodents. First, I will discuss work I have done to uncover the regulatory mechanisms in each species that define distinct spatial landscapes of pigment gene expression and uncover how evolution of these mechanisms at different levels has facilitated convergent evolution of stripe patterning. Then, using a model developed from prior work in our lab, I will illustrate how patterning can be established during embryogenesis through different means of modulating a core developmental pathway.