Date Available
12-14-2011
Year of Publication
2007
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Document Type
Dissertation
College
Arts and Sciences
Department
Biology
First Advisor
Dr. S. Randal Voss
Abstract
Tiger salamanders, and especially the Mexican axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum), are important model organisms in biological research. This dissertation describes new genomic resources and scientific results that greatly extend the utility of tiger salamanders. With respect to new resources, this dissertation describes the development of expressed sequence tags and assembled contigs, a comparative genome map, a web-portal that makes genomic information freely available to the scientific community, and a computer program that compares structure features of organism genomes. With respect to new scientific results, this dissertation describes a quantitative trait locus that is associated with ecologically and evolutionarily relevant variation in developmental timing, the evolutionary history of the tiger salamander genome in relation to other vertebrate genomes, the likely origin of amniote sex chromosomes, and the identification of the Mexican axolotl sex-determining locus. This dissertation is concluded with a brief outline of future research directions that can extend from the works that are presented here.
Recommended Citation
Smith, Jeramiah James, "AMBYSTOMA: PERSPECTIVES ON ADAPTATION AND THE EVOLUTION OF VERTEBRATE GENOMES" (2007). University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations. 540.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/gradschool_diss/540
