Annotation of Genes in the Insulin Signaling Pathway Across Drosophila Species

The annotation of genes in well-characterized signaling and metabolic pathways allows for a better understanding of the relationship between a gene’s evolution and its position within a network. Drosophila has proven to be an excellent model for studying the evolution of gene expression regulatory mechanisms, as genes in this pathway are well conserved, and Drosophila species have undergone many duplications and losses over time. This project focused on the annotation of coding spans of the Target of Rapamycin gene across Drosophila species in the Insulin Signaling pathway. In this specific analysis, it is revealed that not all isoforms are conserved, and gene structure has evolved over time