Non-Technical Summary
Life on Earth is hugely diverse. But we know that life started from the same place, so where did this vast diversity come from?
The answer to life’s diversity lies hidden within our genomes - a unique set of instructions on how to create an organism. All genomes are made up of DNA strands. At WGDip, we’re interested in understanding why genomes don’t stay the same and what mechanisms drive these changes.
Our focus is to understand more about how an organism’s whole genome can be duplicated, creating double the amount of genetic information within a cell. One of the copies might remain the same over time, while the second might undergo changes in the form of mutations, making the copies less similar over time. Our scientists, armed with new data sets and powerful tools, are investigating how these genetic changes shaped adaptation and biological evolution across the eukaryotic tree of life.
Illustration of a whole genome duplication event that causes double the strands of DNA. This extra DNA can gain new biological functions over time due to an accumulation of mutations. This new biological function might give the organism an evolutionary advantage.