ACES

 

The “Center for Environmental Stress Research” (ACES) is located at the University of Aarhus (AU)
and is funded by a center grant from the Danish Natural Sciences Research Council.

Summary of Research Plan:

We aim at studying the evolution of resistance to environmental stress and its implications at different levels of biological organization. Stress influences cellular processes, an individual's physiology, genetic variation at the population level, and the process of natural selection. To investigate these different, though highly connected levels of stress effects, the stress group intends to integrate approaches from ecology, evolution, ecophysiology, molecular biology and genetics. For investigating the mechanisms of stress resistance, how resistance evolves and what conflicting factors constrain its evolution, the center will use well-defined model systems. Experiments will be conducted with Drosophila melanogaster, an organism well studied both in genetics and evolutionary biology and with thermal stress as a stress model.      We will identify quantitative trait loci for thermal stress resistance, and investigate DNA-sequence variation in candidate genes and its relation to variation in stress resistance. Population studies will be undertaken to study genetic differentiation as a response to environmental stress, rates of evolution, and synergistic effects of different stress factors. The interactions between longevity and stress resistance will be investigated together with the effects of repeated mild heat shocks on aging processes. The kinetics of cellular responses to stress and their alteration by artificial selection will be studied by expression profiling. Complementary to the cellular physiology, we will investigate the kinetics of physiological and biochemical changes in whole organism occurring during acclimation to thermal stress. With this highly integrated multidisciplinary approach we will be able to test novel hypotheses on the role of heat shock proteins and membranes for stress resistance, the role of genetic variation in stress response mechanisms for evolution and on the interaction between stress resistance and longevity.