Date of Award

Spring 2024

Project Type

Dissertation

Program or Major

Molecular and Evolutionary Systems Biology

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

First Advisor

Matthew MacManes

Second Advisor

Rebecca Rowe

Third Advisor

David Plachetzki

Abstract

Desert environments pose extreme challenges for organisms, necessitating the evolution of specialized physiological, biochemical, and genomic mechanisms for survival. My research focuses on the cactus mouse (Peromyscus eremicus), exploring real time long term physiological changes and multi-tissue transcriptomics. The advent of both modern metabolic and sequencing technologies has revolutionized our approach to studying whole organismal responses on a fine scale, offering the ability to analyze changes during environmental fluctuations. However, these methods bring a new viewpoint that has highlighted our lack of understanding of the associated biology. My Ph.D. research takes an interdisciplinary approach, summarizing the interaction between metabolism and the environment, modifying traditional methods to collecting metabolic data at longer timescales, and exploring current genomic tools for multiple tissues to inform causal genes and alleles and help identify mechanistic roles of the alleles. Two main experiments are covered in this work: chapter one characterizes the response of the cactus mouse to water-deprivation and chapter two explores the cactus mouse’s response to a standard higher-fat diet and a low-fat diet. The first section of both chapters provides a comprehensive analysis of phenotypic measurements. The second section of both chapters analyzes gene expression data from five tissues related to water homeostasis and relates the expression data back to the phenotypic measurements, a particularly difficult task due to the mismatch in timescales when analyzing single-point data with time series data. These findings underscore the intricate interplay between phenotypic and genomic responses, as well as environmental adaptation, offering valuable insights into survival strategies in harsh habitats and potential implications for long-term population viability amid changing climates.

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