Department of Plant Biology and the Ecology, Evolution & Behavior Program, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA.
Mol Ecol. 2021 Jan;30(1):30-32. doi: 10.1111/mec.15729. Epub 2020 Dec 1.
Natural environments can change quickly and organisms living in these environments can either move, go extinct, or persist through rapid adaptation. Understanding the genetic and phenotypic changes that occur during rapid adaptation is crucial for predicting how populations will respond to sudden environmental changes. Since gene expression links genotype to phenotype, determining how rapid adaptation shapes the transcriptome will be useful for identifying both the traits and the genes important for adaptation, especially in cases where adaptation involves changes in quantitative traits. However, we lack a clear understanding of how rapid adaptation can cause and be caused by changes in gene expression. In this issue of Molecular Ecology, Hamann et al. (2020) investigate how gene expression has evolved during rapid adaptation to drought in two populations of the plant species Brassica rapa.
自然环境变化迅速，生活在这些环境中的生物要么迁移，要么灭绝，要么通过快速适应而存活下来。了解快速适应过程中发生的遗传和表型变化对于预测种群对突发环境变化的反应至关重要。由于基因表达将基因型与表型联系起来，因此确定快速适应如何塑造转录组对于识别适应的重要特征和基因将非常有用，特别是在适应涉及数量性状变化的情况下。然而，我们对快速适应如何引起和被基因表达的变化所引起还缺乏清晰的认识。在本期《分子生态学》中，Hamann 等人（2020）研究了在植物物种甘蓝型油菜的两个种群中，基因表达是如何在对干旱的快速适应过程中进化的。
