On the origin of ‘bloopergenes’: unraveling the evolution of the balanced lethal system in Triturus newts

Visser, M.C. de (2025)

Doctoral Thesis

This dissertation is part of a broader research project that revolves around unraveling the evolution of balanced lethal systems. To understand why balanced lethal systems exist in nature, it is important to learn as much as possible about their genomic basis at the point of origin. To do this, the case of Triturus gives rise to an excellent starting point. However, salamanders have gigantic genomes, which does not always make it easy to genomically study them. Thus, this dissertation comprises not only Chapters describing the most recent hypotheses and empirical insights regarding the balanced lethal system of Triturus, but also Chapters describing the innovative methodologies that I applied to make studying this possible in the first place.

• Balanced Lethal System
• Triturus
• Supergene
• Bloopergene
• Hyb-seq
• Urodela
• Target Enrichment
• Ancient Introgression
• Salamanders
• Presence Absence Variation

• All authors: Visser, M.C. de
• Supervisor: Richardson, M.K.
• Co-supervisor: Wielstra, B.
• Committee: Meijer, A.H.; Winde, H. de; Schilthuizen, M.; Bosse, M.; Peijnenburg, K.
• Qualification: Doctor (dr.)
• Awarding Institution: Institute of Biology (IBL), Faculty of Science, Leiden University
• Date: 2025-03-05
• ISBN (print): 9789464737257