Institute of Plant Sciences & Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, 3013, Bern, Switzerland.
WSL Swiss Federal Research Institute, 8903, Birmensdorf, Switzerland.
New Phytol. 2022 Jul;235(2):391-401. doi: 10.1111/nph.18108. Epub 2022 Apr 5.
The rapid development of ancient DNA analysis in the last decades has induced a paradigm shift in ecology and evolution. Driven by a combination of breakthroughs in DNA isolation techniques, high-throughput sequencing, and bioinformatics, ancient genome-scale data for a rapidly growing variety of taxa are now available, allowing researchers to directly observe demographic and evolutionary processes over time. However, the vast majority of paleogenomic studies still focus on human or animal remains. In this article, we make the case for a vast untapped resource of ancient plant material that is ideally suited for paleogenomic analyses: plant remains, such as needles, leaves, wood, seeds, or fruits, that are deposited in natural archives, such as lake sediments, permafrost, or even ice caves. Such plant remains are commonly found in large numbers and in stratigraphic sequence through time and have so far been used primarily to reconstruct past local species presences and abundances. However, they are also unique repositories of genetic information with the potential to revolutionize the fields of ecology and evolution by directly studying microevolutionary processes over time. Here, we give an overview of the current state-of-the-art, address important challenges, and highlight new research avenues to inspire future research.
在过去几十年中，古 DNA 分析的快速发展引发了生态学和进化生物学的范式转变。受到 DNA 分离技术、高通量测序和生物信息学突破的共同推动，现在可获得越来越多种类的具有基因组规模的古代数据，使研究人员能够直接观察随时间推移的人口和进化过程。然而，绝大多数古基因组研究仍集中在人类或动物遗骸上。在本文中，我们提出了一个巨大的尚未开发的古代植物材料资源的案例，这些植物材料非常适合古基因组分析：植物遗骸，如针叶、叶子、木材、种子或果实，它们被沉积在自然档案中，如湖泊沉积物、永久冻土，甚至冰洞。这种植物遗骸通常以大量的数量和随时间推移的地层序列存在，迄今为止，它们主要被用于重建过去当地物种的存在和丰度。然而，它们也是遗传信息的独特储存库，有可能通过直接研究随时间推移的微观进化过程，彻底改变生态学和进化生物学领域。在这里，我们概述了当前的最新技术，解决了重要的挑战，并强调了新的研究途径，以激发未来的研究。
