Presentation Title
Local adaptation to pH variability in purple sea urchins
Abstract
There’s little known about the mechanisms underlying adaptation to variable environmental conditions, especially in populations experiencing high gene flow. Phenotypic plasticity, which involves the differential expression of genes in response to external stimuli, often evolves in such environments, and thus, the evolution of gene regulation is hypothesized to play a major role in the adaptation to environmental variability. Different populations of purple sea urchins have been experiencing different magnitudes of pH variability for millions of years and as a consequence has evolved phenotypic plasticity but with population-specific differences. In this study, the whole genome of 140 purple urchins from 7 populations experiencing different pH variabilities was sequenced and a set of mutations putatively involved in local adaptation were identified, despite the urchin’s mobile larval life stage causing high gene flow. We found a significantly higher proportion of these mutations to be located in regulatory regions and transcription factors, supporting the idea that the evolution of gene regulation is important in adaptation to variable environmental conditions.
Primary Faculty Mentor Name
Melissa Pespeni
Faculty/Staff Collaborators
Reid Brennan (Collaborating Postdoc), Melissa Pespeni (PhD advisor)
Status
Graduate
Student College
College of Arts and Sciences
Program/Major
Biological Science
Primary Research Category
Biological Sciences
Local adaptation to pH variability in purple sea urchins
There’s little known about the mechanisms underlying adaptation to variable environmental conditions, especially in populations experiencing high gene flow. Phenotypic plasticity, which involves the differential expression of genes in response to external stimuli, often evolves in such environments, and thus, the evolution of gene regulation is hypothesized to play a major role in the adaptation to environmental variability. Different populations of purple sea urchins have been experiencing different magnitudes of pH variability for millions of years and as a consequence has evolved phenotypic plasticity but with population-specific differences. In this study, the whole genome of 140 purple urchins from 7 populations experiencing different pH variabilities was sequenced and a set of mutations putatively involved in local adaptation were identified, despite the urchin’s mobile larval life stage causing high gene flow. We found a significantly higher proportion of these mutations to be located in regulatory regions and transcription factors, supporting the idea that the evolution of gene regulation is important in adaptation to variable environmental conditions.