Repeatability of gene expression evolution in experimental environmental adaptation.

ABSTRACT: Assessing the relative roles of chance and necessity in evolution is of wide interest, but it requires evolving the same population under the same environment multiple times-a virtually impossible task in nature that has been repeatedly accomplished in the laboratory. Capitalizing on the transcriptome data collected in 10 laboratory evolution studies conducted in 22 distinct environments, we investigate the evolutionary repeatability of a total of 182,103 gene expression traits in a prokaryotic and five eukaryotic species. The number of gene expression traits exhibiting concordant changes in direction and magnitude between two replicate populations typically exceeds the chance expectation by 10 to 100 standard deviations. Contrasting replicate evolution in the same environment with that in

SUBMITTER: Li J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12946262 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature