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Genomic basis and evolutionary potential for extreme drought adaptation in Arabidopsis thaliana

View ORCID ProfileMoises Exposito-Alonso, François Vasseur, Wei Ding, George Wang, View ORCID ProfileHernán A. Burbano, View ORCID ProfileDetlef Weigel
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/118067
Moises Exposito-Alonso
1Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, 72076 Tübingen, Germany
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François Vasseur
1Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, 72076 Tübingen, Germany
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Wei Ding
1Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, 72076 Tübingen, Germany
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George Wang
1Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, 72076 Tübingen, Germany
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Hernán A. Burbano
1Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, 72076 Tübingen, Germany
2Research Group for Ancient Genomics and Evolution, Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, 72076 Tübingen, Germany
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Detlef Weigel
1Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, 72076 Tübingen, Germany
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  • For correspondence: weigel@weigelworld.org
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Abstract

Because earth is currently experiencing unprecedented climate change, it is important to predict how species will respond to it. However, geographically-explicit predictive studies frequently ignore that species are comprised of genetically diverse individuals that can vary in their degree of adaptation to extreme local environments; properties that will determine the species’ ability to withstand climate change. Because an increase in extreme drought events is expected to challenge plant communities with global warming, we carried out a greenhouse experiment to investigate which genetic variants predict surviving an extreme drought event and how those variants are distributed across Eurasian Arabidopsis thaliana individuals. Genetic variants conferring higher drought survival showed signatures of polygenic adaptation, and were more frequently found in Mediterranean and Scandinavian regions. Using geoenvironmental models, we predicted that Central European populations might lag behind in adaptation by the end of the 21st century. Further analyses showed that a population decline could nevertheless be compensated by natural selection acting efficiently over standing variation or by migration of adapted individuals from populations at the margins of the species’ distribution. These findings highlight the importance of within-species genetic heterogeneity in facilitating an evolutionary response to a changing climate.

One-sentence summary “Future genetic changes in A. thaliana populations can be forecast by combining climate change models with genomic predictions based on experimental phenotypic data.”

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted March 18, 2017.
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Genomic basis and evolutionary potential for extreme drought adaptation in Arabidopsis thaliana
Moises Exposito-Alonso, François Vasseur, Wei Ding, George Wang, Hernán A. Burbano, Detlef Weigel
bioRxiv 118067; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/118067
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Genomic basis and evolutionary potential for extreme drought adaptation in Arabidopsis thaliana
Moises Exposito-Alonso, François Vasseur, Wei Ding, George Wang, Hernán A. Burbano, Detlef Weigel
bioRxiv 118067; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/118067

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