Gene Family Expansions Provide Molecular Flexibility Required for Context-Dependent Species Interactions.

ABSTRACT: As environments worldwide change at unprecedented rates during the Anthropocene, understanding context dependency-how species interactions vary depending on environmental context-is crucial. Combining comparative genomics across 42 angiosperms with transcriptomics, genome-wide association mapping and gene duplication origin analyses, we show for the first time that gene family expansions are important to context-dependent regulation of species interactions. Gene families expanded in mycorrhizal fungi-associating plants display up to 200% more context-dependent gene expression and double the genetic variation associated with mycorrhizal benefits to plant fitness. Moreover, we discover these gene family expansions arise primarily from tandem duplications with > 2-times more tandem duplicatio

SUBMITTER: Hernandez DJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12453137 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature