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Gene Regulatory Evolution in Cold-Adapted Fly Populations Neutralizes Plasticity and May Undermine Genetic Canalization.
Huang, Yuheng; Lack, Justin B; Hoppel, Grant T; Pool, John E.
Affiliation
  • Huang Y; Laboratory of Genetics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
  • Lack JB; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697, USA.
  • Hoppel GT; Laboratory of Genetics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
  • Pool JE; Advanced Biomedical Computational Science, Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research, Frederick, MD 21701, USA.
Genome Biol Evol ; 14(4)2022 04 10.
Article in En | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-35380655
ABSTRACT
The relationships between adaptive evolution, phenotypic plasticity, and canalization remain incompletely understood. Theoretical and empirical studies have made conflicting arguments on whether adaptive evolution may enhance or oppose the plastic response. Gene regulatory traits offer excellent potential to study the relationship between plasticity and adaptation, and they can now be studied at the transcriptomic level. Here, we take advantage of three closely related pairs of natural populations of Drosophila melanogaster from contrasting thermal environments that reflect three separate instances of cold tolerance evolution. We measure the transcriptome-wide plasticity in gene expression levels and alternative splicing (intron usage) between warm and cold laboratory environments. We find that suspected adaptive changes in both gene expression and alternative splicing tend to neutralize the ancestral plastic response. Further, we investigate the hypothesis that adaptive evolution can lead to decanalization of selected gene regulatory traits. We find strong evidence that suspected adaptive gene expression (but not splicing) changes in cold-adapted populations are more vulnerable to the genetic perturbation of inbreeding than putatively neutral changes. We find some evidence that these patterns may reflect a loss of genetic canalization accompanying adaptation, although other processes including hitchhiking recessive deleterious variants may contribute as well. Our findings augment our understanding of genetic and environmental effects on gene regulation in the context of adaptive evolution.
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Full text: 1 Collection: 01-internacional Database: MEDLINE Main subject: Evolution, Molecular / Drosophila melanogaster Limits: Animals Language: En Journal: Genome Biol Evol Journal subject: BIOLOGIA / BIOLOGIA MOLECULAR Year: 2022 Document type: Article Affiliation country: Estados Unidos

Full text: 1 Collection: 01-internacional Database: MEDLINE Main subject: Evolution, Molecular / Drosophila melanogaster Limits: Animals Language: En Journal: Genome Biol Evol Journal subject: BIOLOGIA / BIOLOGIA MOLECULAR Year: 2022 Document type: Article Affiliation country: Estados Unidos
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