Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago, 1101 East 57th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
Science. 2011 Oct 7;334(6052):83-6. doi: 10.1126/science.1209244.
Understanding the genetic bases and modes of adaptation to current climatic conditions is essential to accurately predict responses to future environmental change. We conducted a genome-wide scan to identify climate-adaptive genetic loci and pathways in the plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Amino acid-changing variants were significantly enriched among the loci strongly correlated with climate, suggesting that our scan effectively detects adaptive alleles. Moreover, from our results, we successfully predicted relative fitness among a set of geographically diverse A. thaliana accessions when grown together in a common environment. Our results provide a set of candidates for dissecting the molecular bases of climate adaptations, as well as insights about the prevalence of selective sweeps, which has implications for predicting the rate of adaptation.
了解适应当前气候条件的遗传基础和模式对于准确预测未来环境变化的响应至关重要。我们对植物拟南芥进行了全基因组扫描，以鉴定与气候强烈相关的遗传基因座和途径。在与气候强烈相关的基因座中，氨基酸改变的变体明显富集，这表明我们的扫描有效地检测到了适应性等位基因。此外，根据我们的结果，当一组在共同环境中生长的具有地理差异的拟南芥品系在一起生长时，我们成功地预测了它们的相对适应度。我们的研究结果为解析气候适应的分子基础提供了一组候选基因，也为选择性清除的普遍性提供了一些见解，这对预测适应速度具有重要意义。
