Research Project
Full description The impact of selection on host immune function genes has been widely documented. However, it remains essentially unknown how mutation influences the quantitative immune traits that selection acts on. This project aimed to address that knowledge gap using a classical mutation accumulation (MA) experimental design in Drosophila serrata. We imposed brother sister inbreeding for 30 generations in 65 independent lines established from the same highly inbred ancestral population, greatly reducing the opportunity for selection and allowing mutations arising spontaneously in each line to fix or be lost under random genetic drift. We then determined how mutation affected survival following pathogen infection, and reproductive output.