Project description:The interplay between phenotypic plasticity and adaptive evolution has long been an important topic of evolutionary biology. This process is critical to our understanding of a species evolutionary potential in light of rapid climate changes. Despite recent theoretical work, empirical studies of natural populations, especially in marine invertebrates, are scarce. In this study, we investigated the relationship between adaptive divergence and plasticity by integrating genetic and phenotypic variation in Pacific oysters from its natural range in China. Genome resequencing of 371 oysters revealed unexpected fine-scale genetic structure that is largely consistent with phenotypic divergence in growth, physiology, thermal tolerance and gene expression across environmental gradient. These findings suggest that selection and local adaptation are pervasive and together with limited gene flow shape adaptive divergence. Plasticity in gene expression is positively correlated with evolved divergence, indicating that plasticity is adaptive and likely favored by selection in organisms facing dynamic environments such as oysters. Divergence in heat response and tolerance implies that the evolutionary potential to a warming climate differs among oyster populations. We suggest that trade-offs in energy allocation are important to adaptive divergence with acetylation playing a role in energy depression under thermal stress.
Project description:Limited systems-level understanding of CO2 concentrating mechanism (CCM) and metabolic adaption in response to different CO2-level in wild oleaginous algae has hindered the development of microalgal feedstock and the knowledge of its role in global warming and oceanic acidification. Nannochloropsis are a group of small unicellular microalgae widely distributed in oceans and fresh water, which implies that it plays a crucial role in biogeochemical cycles impinged on global climate change. In addition, Nannochloropsis has been used for flue gas fixation in many large-scale and pilot-scale outdoor cultivation facilities for photosynthetic production of fuels and chemicals. To untangle the intricate genome-wide networks underlying CCM and metabolic adjustment under different CO2 concentrations in Nannochloropsis, we applied high-throughput mRNA-sequencing and reconstructed the structure and dynamics of the genome-wide functional network underlying robust microalgal CCM and in Nannochloropsis oceanica, by tracking the genome-wide, single-base-resolution transcript change for the complete time-courses of different CO2 concentrations.
2019-07-16 | GSE55861 | GEO
Project description:The genetic basis of evolutionary divergence in oceanic island birds
| PRJNA1077913 | ENA
Project description:Diversification within an oceanic Mediterranean island: insights from a terrestrial isopod
Project description:D. grimshawi microarray used to text for gene expression differences between two populations subjected to control or low-intensity heat for one week during maturation Anthropogenic influences on global processes and climatic conditions are increasingly affecting ecosystems throughout the world. Hawaii Island’s native ecosystems are well-studied and local long-term climatic trends well-documented, making these ecosystems ideal for evaluating how native taxa may respond to a warming environment. This study documents adaptive divergence of populations of a Hawaiian picture wing Drosophila, D. sproati, that are separated by only 7km and 365m in elevation. Representative laboratory populations show divergent behavioral and physiological responses to an experimental low-intensity increase in ambient temperature during maturation. The significant interaction of source population by temperature treatment for behavioral and physiological measurements indicates differential adaptation to temperature for the two populations. Significant differences in gene expression among males were mostly explained by the source population, with eleven genes in males also showing a significant interaction of source population by temperature treatment. The combined behavior, physiology, and gene expression differences between populations illustrates the potential for local adaptation to occur over a fine spatial scale and exemplifies nuanced response to climate change.
Project description:Patterns in functional diversity of organisms at large spatial scales can provide insight into possible responses to future climate change, but it remains a challenge to link large-scale patterns at the organismal level to their underlying physiological mechanisms. The climate variability hypothesis predicts that temperate ectotherms will be less vulnerable to climate warming than tropical ectotherms, due to their superior acclimatization capacity.We investigate thermal acclimation of three species of Takydromus lizards distributed along a broad latitudinal gradient in China, by studying metabolic modifications at the level of the whole organism,organ, mitochondria, metabolome, and proteome.
Project description:Mammalian embryos exhibits sophisticated cell organizations that are intricately orchestrated at both molecular and cellular level. It has recently become apparent that cells within the animal body display significant heterogeneity, both in terms of their cellular properties and their spatial distributions. However, current spatial transcriptomics profiling either lack three-dimensional representation or are limited in their ability to capture the complexity of embryonic tissues and organs. Here, we present a represented spatial transcriptome atlas of all major organs at embryonic day 13.5 (E13.5) in the mouse embryo, and provide a three- dimensional rendering of molecular regulation for embryonic patterning with stacked sections. By integrating this spatial transcriptome data with corresponding single-cell transcriptome data, we offer a detailed molecular annotation of the dynamic nature of organ development, spatial cellular interaction, embryonic axes and divergence of cell fates underlying mammalian development, which would pave the way for precise organ engineering and stem cell-based regenerative medicine.
Project description:Plants display remarkable developmental and phenotypic plasticity in order to adapt to their environment. It has long been postulated that epigenetics plays a key role in these processes, but with one or two exceptions, solid evidence for the role of epigenetic variation in these processes is lacking. A key impediment to understanding these processes is the lack of information on the extent of epigenetic variation and how it relates to genetic and phenotypic variation in natural population, both over the lifecycle of an individual, and over evolutionary time. Here we show that genetic variants under selection in the north of Sweden appear to drive variation in DNA methylation, which in turn is highly correlated with local climate. Selective sweeps and genetic variants associated with adaptation to the local environment have previously been identified within the Swedish Arabidopsis population. Our finding that they harbour variants responsible for climate associated epigenetic variation strongly supports the role of epigenetic processes in local adaptation. These findings provide a basis for further dissecting the role of epigenetics in local adaptation at the molecular level Bisulfite sequencing of 113 F2 crosses between T550 and Brosarp-11-135.
Project description:Diatoms are responsible for ~40% of marine primary productivity1, fueling the oceanic carbon cycle and contributing to natural carbon sequestration in the deep ocean2. Diatoms rely on energetically expensive carbon concentrating mechanisms (CCMs) to fix carbon efficiently at modern levels of CO23–5. How diatoms may respond over the short and long-term to rising atmospheric CO2 remains an open question. Here we use nitrate-limited chemostats to show that the model diatom Thalassiosira pseudonana rapidly responds to increasing CO2 by differentially expressing gene clusters that regulate transcription and chromosome folding and subsequently reduces transcription of photosynthesis and respiration gene clusters under steady-state elevated CO2. These results suggest that exposure to elevated CO2 first causes a shift in regulation and then a metabolic rearrangement. Genes in one CO2-responsive cluster included CCM and photorespiration genes that share a putative cyclic-AMP responsive cis-regulatory sequence, implying these genes are co-regulated in response to CO2 with cAMP as an intermediate messenger. We verified cAMP-induced down-regulation of CCM gene δ-CA3 in nutrient-replete diatom cultures by inhibiting the hydrolysis of cAMP. These results indicate an important role for cAMP in down-regulating CCM and photorespiration genes under elevated CO2 and provide insights into mechanisms of diatom acclimation in response to climate change.
Project description:Cichlids fishes exhibit extensive phenotypic diversification and speciation. In this study we integrate transcriptomic and proteomic signatures from two cichlids species, identify novel open reading frames (nORFs) and perform evolutionary analysis on these nORF regions. We embark comparative transrcriptomics and proteogenomic analysis of two metabolically active tissues, the testes and liver, of two cichlid species Oreochromis niloticus (Nile tilapia, ON) and Pundamilia nyererei (Makobe Island, PN). Our results suggest that the time scale of speciation of the two species can be better explained by the evolutionary divergence of these nORF genomic regions.