PhD Scholarship in Evolution of Sex Chromosomes and Sex Determination

The Faculty of Sciences and Bioengineering Sciences, Department Department of Biology, is looking for a PhD-student with a doctoral grant. 

More concretely your work package, for the preparation of a doctorate, contains: 

4-year fully funded PhD scholarship in the evolution and genetics of frog sex chromosomes and sex determination is available in the Ma lab (https://www.wmalab.com). The prospective student can choose one of two research themes to pursue.

Theme 1. Evolution and genetic mechanism of sexual dimorphism in recombination 

Males and females can have very different recombination patterns and rates during meiosis. Such heterochiasmy is extreme in many frog lineages, but the low recombination does not always associate with the heterogametic sex (the XY or ZW individuals). Sexual dimorphism in recombination may be a by-product of mechanistic differences between meiosis in males and females, or it may be adaptive and selected to promote tight linkage of beneficial alleles on the Y or W chromosome. However, neither of these hypotheses can adequately explain sex differences in recombination in all animals. In various lineages, sex differences in recombination can vary in degree and direction even between closely related species. This project aims to reveal the evolution and genetic mechanism of extreme heterochiasmy, and understand the interplay between the extreme heterochiasmy, sex chromosome recombination arrest, and evolutionary dynamics of sex chromosomes by comparing many frog species.

Theme 2. The genetic mechanism of sex determination 

There is a surprising diversity and variability in the genetics of sex determination among eukaryotes. Unlike stable sex chromosomes in most mammals and birds, sex chromosomes have been found to go through frequent turnovers in certain lineages of reptiles, many amphibians and teleost fishes. The reason for sex determination lability is unresolved. This project will investigate both genetic and epigenetic sex-determining mechanisms in frogs by identifying (master) sex-determining genes in species with intra-species polymorphism in sex determination. It will compare closely related species among various taxa within a phylogenetic framework.

For this function, our Brussels Humanities, Sciences & Engineering Campus (Elsene) will serve as your home base.