Hepatic Gene Expression in woodrats on Creosote and Juniper Diets with distinct Plant Secondary Compounds

ABSTRACT: Herbivores are predicted to evolve appropriate mechanisms to process the plant secondary compounds (PSCs) in their diet and these mechanisms are likely specific to particular suites of PSCs. Changes in diet composition over evolutionary time should select for appropriate alterations in metabolism of the more recent dietary components. We investigated differences in gene expression profiles in the liver with respect to prior ecological and evolutionary experience with PSCs in the desert woodrat, Neotoma lepida. This woodrat species has populations in the Mojave Desert that have switched from feeding on juniper to feeding on creosote at the end of the Holocene as well as populations in the Great Basin Desert that still feed on the ancestral diet of juniper and are naïve to creosote. Juniper

ORGANISM(S): Neotoma lepida

SUBMITTER: Elodie Magnanou 

PROVIDER: E-GEOD-44411 | biostudies-arrayexpress |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-arrayexpress