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Evolutionary genomics of lifespan variation in mammals
Secondary Supervisor(s): Professor Eamonn Mallon
University of Registration: Coventry University
BBSRC Research Themes:
Project Outline
Eusociality, defined by reproductive division of labour and cooperative brood care, is one of the major evolutionary transitions in biological complexity. Termites provide a powerful system to study its molecular basis, as they represent an independent origin of eusociality and span a gradient from simple to highly complex societies. A central question is how genomes encode the transcriptional architectures that enable the development, maintenance and interaction of distinct castes, the defining feature of eusocial life.
This project will use available termite genomes and caste-specific brain transcriptomes across multiple species, alongside outgroups such as subsocial wood roaches, to investigate the evolution of transcriptional architecture. Specifically, it will ask how regulatory programs, such as caste-biased expression, co-expression modules, and network properties, are encoded within genomes, and how these features shift with increasing social complexity.
Machine learning will be employed to capture and interpret the multidimensional patterns of gene regulation. Unsupervised approaches will uncover latent transcriptional modules within and between species, while supervised models will test whether caste identity and social complexity can be predicted from genomic and transcriptomic features. Model interpretation will highlight the key genes, pathways, and regulatory mechanisms underpinning caste differentiation and social evolution.
By combining evolutionary genomics with machine learning, this project will advance our understanding of how transcriptional architectures evolve to produce and sustain caste systems. It will generate fundamental insights into the molecular basis of eusociality and more broadly into how genomes encode the regulatory innovations that underlie major evolutionary transitions.
