Ecological adaptation in Atlantic herring is associated with large shifts in allele frequencies at hundreds of loci
Abstract
Atlantic herring is widespread in North Atlantic and adjacent waters and is one of the most abundant vertebrates on earth. This species is well suited to explore genetic adaptation due to minute genetic differentiation at selectively neutral loci. Here we report hundreds of loci underlying ecological adaptation to different geographic areas and spawning conditions. Four of these represent megabase inversions confirmed by long read sequencing. The genetic architecture underlying ecological adaptation in herring deviates from expectation under a classical infinitesimal model for complex traits because of large shifts in allele frequencies at hundreds of loci under selection.
Data availability
Data availability statement. The sequence data generated in this study is available in Bioproject PRJNA642736.Code availability statement. The analyses of data have been carried out with publicly available software and all are cited in the Methods section. Custom scripts used are available in Github (https://github.com/Fan-Han/Population-analysis-with-pooled-data)
-
Re-sequencing of Atlantic Herring populations and individualsNCBI Bioproject, PRJNA642736.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Knut och Alice Wallenbergs Stiftelse (KAW scholar)
- Leif Andersson
Vetenskapsrådet (Senior professor)
- Leif Andersson
Research Council of Norway (254774)
- Arild Folkvord
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Jonathan Flint, University of California, Los Angeles, United States
Version history
- Received: July 15, 2020
- Accepted: December 3, 2020
- Accepted Manuscript published: December 4, 2020 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: December 15, 2020 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2020, Han et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 3,890
- views
-
- 488
- downloads
-
- 58
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Further reading
-
- Evolutionary Biology
Extant ecdysozoans (moulting animals) are represented by a great variety of soft-bodied or articulated organisms that may or may not have appendages. However, controversies remain about the vermiform nature (i.e. elongated and tubular) of their ancestral body plan. We describe here Beretella spinosa gen. et sp. nov. a tiny (maximal length 3 mm) ecdysozoan from the lowermost Cambrian, Yanjiahe Formation, South China, characterized by an unusual sack-like appearance, single opening, and spiny ornament. Beretella spinosa gen. et sp. nov has no equivalent among animals, except Saccorhytus coronarius, also from the basal Cambrian. Phylogenetic analyses resolve both fossil species as a sister group (Saccorhytida) to all known Ecdysozoa, thus suggesting that ancestral ecdysozoans may have been non-vermiform animals. Saccorhytids are likely to represent an early off-shot along the stem-line Ecdysozoa. Although it became extinct during the Cambrian, this animal lineage provides precious insight into the early evolution of Ecdysozoa and the nature of the earliest representatives of the group.
-
- Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
- Evolutionary Biology
The emergence of new protein functions is crucial for the evolution of organisms. This process has been extensively researched for soluble enzymes, but it is largely unexplored for membrane transporters, even though the ability to acquire new nutrients from a changing environment requires evolvability of transport functions. Here, we demonstrate the importance of environmental pressure in obtaining a new activity or altering a promiscuous activity in members of the amino acid-polyamine-organocation (APC)-type yeast amino acid transporters family. We identify APC members that have broader substrate spectra than previously described. Using in vivo experimental evolution, we evolve two of these transporter genes, AGP1 and PUT4, toward new substrate specificities. Single mutations on these transporters are found to be sufficient for expanding the substrate range of the proteins, while retaining the capacity to transport all original substrates. Nonetheless, each adaptive mutation comes with a distinct effect on the fitness for each of the original substrates, illustrating a trade-off between the ancestral and evolved functions. Collectively, our findings reveal how substrate-adaptive mutations in membrane transporters contribute to fitness and provide insights into how organisms can use transporter evolution to explore new ecological niches.