| Budget Amount *help |
¥2,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,300,000)
Fiscal Year 2006: ¥700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000)
Fiscal Year 2005: ¥1,600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,600,000)
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| Research Abstract |
In the field of evolutionary biology, it is very important to understand the relationship between evolution at the morphological level and that at the molecular level. Mammals have some unique morphological characters, which are not found in birds and reptiles: body hair, big brain, viviparity, and sensitive olfactory organ. In order to investigate the relationship between these mammalian specific morphological features and diversification of genes that were involved in the evolution of these characters, genome sequences of several vertebrate species including human, mouse, bovine, opossum, chicken, African clawed frog, etc. are compared. An exhaustive homology search of the genes among these species suggested that members of 203 gene families were diversified by duplications only in the lineage of mammals. In these gene families, I also found that several genes involved in the development of brain or central nervous system were produced by duplications in the early stage of mammalian evolution. The result of this study had been reported in the 7th annual meeting of the Society of Evolutionary Studies, Japan.
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