Yeserin Yildirim

I am interested in population genetics and issues relating to the distribution of diversity.

Research interests

Since July 2009, several dog poisoning events have occurred in the Hauraki Gulf region of New Zealand. The cause of the poisoning appears to be the grey side-gilled sea slug (Pleurobranchaea maculata) which contains high concentrations of tetrodotoxin (TTX). TTX is a very powerful neurotoxin, also found in other organisms such as the puffer fish and the blue-ringed octopus. However, sea slugs were not previously known to harbour TTX. Not all sea slugs have equal levels of TTX, in fact it appears that some (from different regions of NZ) are completely lacking the toxin. Also, the origin of TTX in sea slugs is not known. Sea slugs may themselves produce the toxin, it may accumulate through their diet or it may be produced by some symbiotic bacteria.

I am currently investigating the genetic diversity and population structure of P. maculata populations from NZ, and I hope to understand the relationship between genetic structure and toxicity levels of different populations. I am in the early stages of my project, but have already a set of polymorphic markers that have been obtained from 454-sequencing of a slugh genome.

The project is a collaborative effort involving investigators at the Allan Wilson Center for Molecular Ecology & Evolution (Craig Millar & Nigel French), the Cawthron Institute and the Auckland Regional Council. We hope that this study will help to shed light on the origin of TTX in sea slugs and will also provide opportunity to assess the risk of toxic populations spreading to other regions of NZ.

Background

I completed my BSc and MSc degrees on Molecular Biology and Genetics at Boğaziçi University (Istanbul, Turkey). During my MSc project, I performed genetic linkage analysis to map genetic loci and identify the responsible gene in three families afflicted with different hereditary diseases, namely “gerodermia osteodysplasticum”, “recessive intellectual disability, motor dysfunction and multiple joint contractures”, and “median cleft lip of both lips”.

Previous publications

Yıldırım Y, Tolun A, Tüysüz B. 2010. The phenotype caused by PYCR1 mutations corresponds to geroderma osteodysplasticum rather than autosomal recessive cutis laxa type 2. Am J Med Genet Part A 155:134–140.
 
Yıldırım Y, Orhan EK, Iseri SA, Serdaroglu-Oflazer P, Kara B, Solakoğlu S, Tolun A. 2011. A frameshift mutation of ERLIN2 in recessive intellectual disability, motor dysfunction and multiple joint contractures. Hum Mol Genet 20:1886–1892.