Molecular Mechanisms of Temperature Tolerance Plasticity in an Arthropod.
Details
Serval ID
serval:BIB_C0D08B86DAA8
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Molecular Mechanisms of Temperature Tolerance Plasticity in an Arthropod.
Journal
Genome biology and evolution
ISSN
1759-6653 (Electronic)
ISSN-L
1759-6653
Publication state
Published
Issued date
05/08/2024
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
16
Number
8
Language
english
Notes
Publication types: Journal Article
Publication Status: ppublish
Publication Status: ppublish
Abstract
How species thrive in a wide range of environments is a major focus of evolutionary biology. For many species, limited genetic diversity or gene flow among habitats means that phenotypic plasticity must play an important role in their capacity to tolerate environmental heterogeneity and to colonize new habitats. However, we have a limited understanding of the molecular components that govern plasticity in ecologically relevant phenotypes. We examined this hypothesis in a spider species (Stegodyphus dumicola) with extremely low species-wide genetic diversity that nevertheless occupies a broad range of thermal environments. We determined phenotypic responses to temperature stress in individuals from four climatic zones using common garden acclimation experiments to disentangle phenotypic plasticity from genetic adaptations. Simultaneously, we created data sets on multiple molecular modalities: the genome, the transcriptome, the methylome, the metabolome, and the bacterial microbiome to determine associations with phenotypic responses. Analyses of phenotypic and molecular associations reveal that acclimation responses in the transcriptome and metabolome correlate with patterns of phenotypic plasticity in temperature tolerance. Surprisingly, genes whose expression seemed to be involved in plasticity in temperature tolerance were generally highly methylated contradicting the idea that DNA methylation stabilizes gene expression. This suggests that the function of DNA methylation in invertebrates varies not only among species but also among genes. The bacterial microbiome was stable across the acclimation period; combined with our previous demonstrations that the microbiome is temporally stable in wild populations, this is convincing evidence that the microbiome does not facilitate plasticity in temperature tolerance. Our results suggest that population-specific variation in temperature tolerance among acclimation temperatures appears to result from the evolution of plasticity in mainly gene expression.
Keywords
Animals, Transcriptome, DNA Methylation, Acclimatization/genetics, Spiders/genetics, Spiders/physiology, Thermotolerance/genetics, Microbiota, Metabolome, Adaptation, Physiological/genetics, Phenotype, Temperature, DNA methylation, metabolomics, phenotypic plasticity, population-specific plasticity, temperature tolerance, transcriptomics
Pubmed
Web of science
Open Access
Yes
Create date
29/07/2024 13:19
Last modification date
27/08/2024 6:30