Significance of differential allelic expression in phenotypic plasticity and evolutionary potential of microbial eukaryotes

• 作者: Ben P.Tatman Thomas Mock Taoyang Wu Cock van Oosterhout
• 来源期刊: 定量生物学（英文版）
• 年，卷（期）: 2021,（4）
• 所属期刊栏目: RESEARCH ARTICLES
• 页码范围: 400-410
• 页数: 11页
• 语种: 英文

摘要

Background:Differential allelic expression(DAE)plays a key role in the regulation of many biological processes,and it may also play a role in adaptive evolution.Recently,environment-dependent DAE has been observed in species of marine phytoplankton,and most remarkably,alleles that showed the highest level of DAE also showed the fastest rate of evolution.Methods:To better understand the role of DAE in adaptive evolution and phenotypic plasticity,we developed a 2-D cellular automata model"DAEsy-World"that builds on the classical Daisyworld model.Results:Simulations show that DAE delineates the evolution of alternative alleles of a gene,enabling the two alleles to adapt to different environmental conditions and sub-functionalize.With DAE,the build-up of genetic polymorphisms within genes is driven by positive selection rather than strict neutral evolution,and this can enhance phenotypic plasticity.Moreover,in sexually reproducing organisms,DAE also increased the standing genetic variation,augmenting a species'adaptive evolutionary potential and ability to respond to fluctuating and/or changing conditions(cf.genetic assimilation).We furthermore show that DAE is likely to evolve in fluctuating environmental conditions.Conclusions:DAE increases the adaptive evolutionary potential of both sexual and asexually reproducing organisms,and it may affect the pattern of nucleotide substitutions of genes.