Talline Martins

     Postdoc, Rausher Lab

     Box 90338

     Duke University

     Durham, NC  27708

 

     talline.martins@duke.edu

     Curriculum Vitae

Research Project

     My project aims to determine the genetic interactions and evolutionary changes underlying anthocyanin pigmentation patterns, petal spots, in a tractable system, Clarkia gracilis. Flower color plays a central role in plant-pollinator communication, and numerous studies have found that variation in the production or pattern of floral pigmentation can greatly affect pollinator behavior and plant fitness, which may be critical facets in speciation.

     In the C. gracilis species complex, flowers can be central-spotted (ssp. sonomensis), basal-spotted (spp. albicaulis and tracyi), and unspotted (ssp. gracilis). Classical genetics studies have shown that presence and location of the spots is determined by the epistatic interaction between two loci, P and I.  One of our goals is to determine how spots are formed in C. gracilis by identifying P and I using floral transcriptome analysis, and by characterizing their role in pigment patterning in flowers.

     We are also interested in understanding how petal spots have evolved in the genus Clarkia. The genus, which encompasses 42 species, boasts a great diversity in floral pigmentation patterns (http://calphotos.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/img_query). We determined that precise spatio-temporal regulation of the anthocyanin biosynthetic pathway leads to petal spot formation in C. gracilis. Our goal is to identify where these changes ocurred in the evolutionary history of the genus, which has both spotted and unspotted species.

Publications

Martins, T. R., Stout, J., Todd, S. E., Kuipers, K., and T. J. Barkman.  2007. Molecular phylogenetic tests of floral scent evolution in the Solanaceae.  In Solanaceae IV: Genomics Meets Biodiversity. Acta Horticulturae 745:  183-200.

Barkman, T. J., Martins, T. R., Sutton, E., and Stout, J. 2007. Positive selection for single amino acid change promotes substrate discrimination of a plant volatile-producing enzyme.  Molecular Biology and Evolution 24(6):1320-1329.

Martins, T. R. and T. J. Barkman. 2005. Reconstruction of Solanaceae Phylogeny using the nuclear gene SAMT.  Systematic Botany 30(2):435-447.