Expression Plasticity of Transposable Elements Is Highly Associated with Organismal Re-adaptation to Ancestral Environments.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the roles of phenotypic plasticity in adaptive evolution has gained recognition for decades. Studies involving multiple taxa have shown that gene expression plasticity serves as "long-term memory" to facilitate re-adaptations to ancestral environments. Nevertheless, the general pattern and the underlying genetic basis of expression plasticity remain unclear. The transposable elements (TEs) play crucial roles in gene expression regulation and are widely distributed within the genome. Given this, we re-analyzed the transcriptomic data of chicken (Gallus gallus) generated from a reciprocal transplant experiment to examine whether expression shifts of TEs are involved in the re-adaptation process. Similar to the protein-coding genes, the plastic changes of TEs overwhelmingly exce

SUBMITTER: Liu YN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9174648 | biostudies-literature | 2022 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature