Drought adaptation in Arabidopsis thaliana by extensive genetic loss-of-function
Drought adaptation in Arabidopsis thaliana by extensive genetic loss-of-function
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DOI：
10.7554/elife.41038
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发表时间：
2018-12
期刊：
影响因子：
7.7
通讯作者：
J. G. Monroe;T. Powell;Nicholas Price;J. Mullen;A. Howard;Kyle Evans;J. Lovell;J. McKay
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
J. G. Monroe;T. Powell;Nicholas Price;J. Mullen;A. Howard;Kyle Evans;J. Lovell;J. McKay
需要跨学科的综合来扩大对自然界适应的环境驱动因素和分子基础的发现。在这里，我们结合了使用全基因组序列、卫星遥感和转基因实验的新方法来研究与野生拟南芥干旱历史相关的自然功能丧失等位基因。我们发现的基因表现出平行分子进化的群体遗传学特征，功能丧失的选择，以及与开花时间表型的共同关联，其方向与长期存在的适应性假说一致的频率比预期高出七倍。然后，我们在转基因基因敲除系中通过实验证实了预测的表型。这些发现揭示了干旱时机对于解释替代耐旱策略的演变的重要性，并进一步挑战了关于自然界遗传功能丧失的适应价值的流行假设。这些结果还激励了改进的物种范围测序工作，以更好地识别功能丧失的变种，并激发了设计作物气候适应能力的新机会。
Interdisciplinary syntheses are needed to scale up discovery of the environmental drivers and molecular basis of adaptation in nature. Here we integrated novel approaches using whole genome sequences, satellite remote sensing, and transgenic experiments to study natural loss-of-function alleles associated with drought histories in wild Arabidopsis thaliana. The genes we identified exhibit population genetic signatures of parallel molecular evolution, selection for loss-of-function, and shared associations with flowering time phenotypes in directions consistent with longstanding adaptive hypotheses seven times more often than expected by chance. We then confirmed predicted phenotypes experimentally in transgenic knockout lines. These findings reveal the importance of drought timing to explain the evolution of alternative drought tolerance strategies and further challenge popular assumptions about the adaptive value of genetic loss-of-function in nature. These results also motivate improved species-wide sequencing efforts to better identify loss-of-function variants and inspire new opportunities for engineering climate resilience in crops.