Why does altruism exist?
About the Project
Altruistic production of public goods is common in biological systems and plays key roles in ecosystem organisation, health and disease. It facilitates behaviours as diverse as predator evasion, viral infection and microbial growth. However, despite decades of study, evolutionary theory is still unable to readily explain why organisms should make costly altruistic sacrifices when they could simply freeload on the sacrifices made by others (resulting in the tragedy of the commons). The seminal work of Hamilton led to the proposal that altruism can indeed be favoured if individuals are able direct help toward relatives. This idea was extended by Richard Dawkins who suggested that this could occur if there are genes that encodes a signal (called a green beard), that also allows the signal to be identified in others, and triggers altruism towards other green bearded individuals. However, these ideas have also been challenged because the selective advantage to greenbearded individuals should drive everyone to have a greenbeard (Crozier’s paradox) or to display a greenbeard but not help (falsebeard cheaters). This suggests our current evolutionary understanding of conflict and cooperation is flawed. This project aims to address this problem and explain why public goods altruism is widespread in nature.
Project outline
The proposed work will advance our understanding of the Theory of Evolution and of a key feature of biological world: how conflict and cooperation shape biological systems. It is based on our recent discovery of a greenbeard system in a social microbial model, Dictyostelium discoideum (Gruenheit et al. 2017 Nature Comms; Madgwick et al. 2018 PNAS). In this system some altruistic individuals sacrifice themselves and die to help the remaining cells disperse as spores. The work will use this study system to determine how public good altruism evolves and is maintained. It will allow us to develop better ways to address ecosystem interactions for nature conservation and microbial interactions in human health. The proposed work leverages our proven success in using our expertise in modelling, genomic data and cutting edge molecular tools to understand evolution and solve complex problems in the life sciences.
- Determine the extent and pattern of greenbeard sequence variation in natural populations of D. discoideum – we will analyse genome sequences from more than 500 wild isolates
- Determine if individuals use the greenbeard system to measure their relatedness and adjust how much of a sacrifice they are willing to make (e.g. less self-sacrifice when they are not with relatives) - greenbeard gene swap strains will be generated and changes in altruistic behaviour measured
- Determine how changes in gene sequence and protein structure result in changes in relatedness and the maintenance of variation – AI and mathematical modelling will be used to determine how selection shapes protein structure and understand the conditions that allow populations of altruists to coexist.
The project is co-supervised by Chris Thompson (University college London) molecular genetics, computational genomics) and Jason Wolf (University of Bath) Mathematical modelling and evolutionary theory) and will be carried out at UCL. Interested applicants should contact christopher.thompson@ucl.ac.uk and jbw22@bath.ac.uk.
Please upload your application: Curriculum vitae, A short supporting statement (<500 words) describing your research interests and relevant experience, Contact details for two academic referees as a single PDF at the following address https://www.dropbox.com/request/ghcrp9f5que2wluntjki
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