Amrita Möhl

Genome duplication provides adaptive potential to species, but it also comes with serious challenges associated with perturbation of key cellular processes, particularly the regular segregation of chromosomes. It is clear from the prevalence of polyploid species in nature that evolution can overcome the challenges associated with genome duplication, and it is exciting to study how the protein repertoire of a cell can evolve in response to such a challenge but, yet retain its critical functions.

I joined the lab of Prof. Kirsten Bomblies as a PhD student in June 2019 and her lab works widely on Arabidopsis arenosa, a close relative of A.thaliana, which has naturally occuring diploid and tetraploid populations, and has emerged as an informative model for studying polyploid adaptation.

My project mainly focuses on studying the process of chromosome compaction in polyploids, and how it might differ from diploids. We found that several chromatin remodeling proteins, called the MORCs belonging to the MORC gene family, and another major player of cohensin complex which is critical in chromatin organization, are under selection in tetraploid meiosis. The main questions I would like to address are:

• "How have these proteins evolved to maintain the polyploid stabilization?"
• "Do these proteins evolve together to retune the meiotic program to hypercondense chromosomes and reduce the recombination rates in the teraploids?"

It is exciting to look for the interactions of these proteins both in vitro and in vivo using various proteomic approaches backed up by genetic analysis.