Combining transcriptomic and fitness data reveals additive and mostly adaptive plastic responses of gene expression to multiple stress in Tribolium castaneum
| Autor: | Eva L. Koch, Frédéric Guillaume |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2018 |
| Předmět: |
0106 biological sciences
Regulation of gene expression 0303 health sciences Environmental change Stressor Biology 010603 evolutionary biology 01 natural sciences Transcriptome 03 medical and health sciences Expression (architecture) Evolutionary biology Gene expression Adaptation Selection (genetic algorithm) 030304 developmental biology |
| DOI: | 10.1101/442145 |
| Popis: | Gene expression is known to be highly responsive to the environment and important for adjustment of metabolism but there is also growing evidence that differences in gene regulation contribute to species divergence and differences among locally adapted populations. However, most studies so far investigated populations when divergence already occurred. Not much is known about the evolutionary processes acting on expression levels when populations first encounter environmental change. Understanding the mechanisms is further complicated by the fact that environmental change is often multivariate, meaning that organisms are exposed to multiple stressors simultaneously, with interactive effects, which can constrain adaptation when multiple responses cannot be optimized at the same time. Here we use a novel approach by combining fitness and whole-transcriptome data in a large-scale experiment to investigate responses to drought, heat and their combination in Tribolium castaneum. We found that fitness was reduced by both stressors and their combined effect was almost additive. Expression data showed that both stressors were acting independently and did not interfere physiologically. Since we measured expression and fitness within the same individuals, we were able to estimate selection on single gene expression levels. We found that variation in fitness can be attributed to gene expression variation and that dependent on the environment different selection pressures are acting, which were opposite between control and stress conditions. We could further show that plastic responses of expression are largely adaptive, meaning they changed in the direction that should increase fitness. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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