The 30th International Conference on Arabidopsis Research (ICAR 2019)

756 / 2019-05-25 16:21:39

Adaptive evolution in Arabidopsis relatives

adaptive evolution, climate change, natural selection, population genetics, genetic diversity.

Plenary track > Evolution & Ecology

Adaptive evolution is essential for organisms to disperse into and survive in diverse habitats, which is the crucial biological question since Darwin. In the past a few years, using Arabidopsis and its relatives, we tried to clarify how plants can adapt to climate change, based on both integrated methods of population genomics and molecular genetics. We clarified some mechanisms of rapid adaptation, and demonstrated evolution is predictable to some extent. In addition, we revealed that pseudogenization and transposable elements play important role in adaptive evolution. Finally, we demonstrated that many loci in plant genomes are under balancing selection, which maintains genetic diversity.