Ricerc@Sapienza

The evolutionary meaning behind genetic variability lies in the ability of organisms to respond appropriately to stressful conditions. Different unfavorable environmental conditions can cause important effects on genome stability or activate and/or increase the activity of Transposable Elements (TEs), leading to heritable alterations in the structure of the genome. Environmental stress such as heat shock has recently been shown to influence silencing mechanisms, through the action of molecular chaperones such as Hsp70 and Hsp90, the latter involved in the biogenesis of piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs; a small, germ line-specific RNA), causing the activation of TEs and the onset of morphological anomalies due to insertional mutagenesis.
In light of that, I plan to test a different kind of stress, caused by the dysfunction of the biological clock, in order to understand the impact of circadian rhythms dysfunctions both in evolution and in human health, using Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism.