Chih-Chiun (Jamie) Chang

ccc12345mail.fresnostate.edu

Charles Darwin's concept that a population evolves through variation in reproductive success between its members is explored through two populations of the model organism Caenorhabditis briggsae. The two populations are HK104, a temperate strain from India, and AF16, a tropical strain from Japan. My experiment explores the fitness of mitochondria-nuclear hybrids by studying nematodes with AF16 nuclear genome paired with HK104 mitochondrial genome and vice versa. This project seeks to explain whether these mitochondria-nuclear hybrids show a decrease or increase in fitness when compared to the pure strains. One particular way to estimate fitness is to measure the amount of fat in nematodes through fluorescent Nile Red staining. The motivation for studying fat levels is that a dysfunction in the interaction of mitochondrial and nuclear genomes could cause malfunctions in electron transport systems like cytochrome c. Faulty metabolic functions would force these nematodes to metabolize more fat to produce energy. The underlying question is whether or not lower fat content or fitness could represent an underlying defect caused by mitochondria-nuclear genetic interactions.