Department of Biology, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel.
Trends Genet. 2013 Aug;29(8):479-87. doi: 10.1016/j.tig.2013.05.006. Epub 2013 Jun 13.
Predicting phenotype from genotype is greatly complicated by the polygenic nature of most traits and by the complex interactions between phenotype and the environment. Here, we review recent whole-genome approaches to understand the underlying principles, mechanisms, and evolutionary impacts of genotype × environment (G×E) interactions, defined as genotype-specific phenotypic responses to different environments. There is accumulating evidence that G×E interactions are ubiquitous, accounting perhaps for the greater part of the phenotypic variation seen across genotypes. Such interactions appear to be the consequence of changes to upstream regulators as opposed to local changes to promoters. Moreover, genes are not equally likely to exhibit G×E interactions; promoter architecture, expression level, regulatory complexity, and essentiality correlate with the differential regulation of a gene by the environment. One implication of this correlation is that expression variation across genotypes alone could be used as a proxy for G×E interactions in those experimental cases where identifying environmental variation is costly or impossible.
预测基因型的表型极大地受到大多数性状的多基因性质以及表型和环境之间的复杂相互作用的影响。在这里，我们回顾了最近的全基因组方法，以了解基因型×环境（G×E）相互作用的基本原理、机制和进化影响，这种相互作用被定义为基因型对不同环境的特定表型反应。有越来越多的证据表明，G×E 相互作用是普遍存在的，可能占不同基因型之间观察到的表型变异的大部分。这种相互作用似乎是上游调节剂变化的结果，而不是启动子的局部变化。此外，基因并不一定会表现出 G×E 相互作用；启动子结构、表达水平、调控复杂性和必需性与基因受环境的差异调控相关。这种相关性的一个含义是，在那些识别环境变化成本高昂或不可能的实验情况下，仅通过基因型的表达变化就可以作为 G×E 相互作用的替代物。
