Population genomics and local adaptation in wild isolates of a model microbial eukaryote.

ABSTRACT: Elucidating the connection between genotype, phenotype, and adaptation in wild populations is fundamental to the study of evolutionary biology, yet it remains an elusive goal, particularly for microscopic taxa, which comprise the majority of life. Even for microbes that can be reliably found in the wild, defining the boundaries of their populations and discovering ecologically relevant phenotypes has proved extremely difficult. Here, we have circumvented these issues in the microbial eukaryote Neurospora crassa by using a "reverse-ecology" population genomic approach that is free of a priori assumptions about candidate adaptive alleles. We performed Illumina whole-transcriptome sequencing of 48 individuals to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms. From these data, we discovered two cryp

SUBMITTER: Ellison CE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3041088 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature