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Evidence that natural selection maintains genetic variation for sleep in Drosophila melanogaster

BACKGROUND: Drosophila melanogaster often shows correlations between latitude and phenotypic or genetic variation on different continents, which suggests local adaptation with respect to a heterogeneous environment. Previous phenotypic analyses of latitudinal clines have investigated mainly physiolo...

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Autores principales: Svetec, Nicolas, Zhao, Li, Saelao, Perot, Chiu, Joanna C, Begun, David J
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4374177/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25887180
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-015-0316-2
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author Svetec, Nicolas
Zhao, Li
Saelao, Perot
Chiu, Joanna C
Begun, David J
author_facet Svetec, Nicolas
Zhao, Li
Saelao, Perot
Chiu, Joanna C
Begun, David J
author_sort Svetec, Nicolas
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Drosophila melanogaster often shows correlations between latitude and phenotypic or genetic variation on different continents, which suggests local adaptation with respect to a heterogeneous environment. Previous phenotypic analyses of latitudinal clines have investigated mainly physiological, morphological, or life-history traits. Here, we studied latitudinal variation in sleep in D. melanogaster populations from North and Central America. In parallel, we used RNA-seq to identify interpopulation gene expression differences. RESULTS: We found that in D. melanogaster the average nighttime sleep bout duration exhibits a latitudinal cline such that sleep bouts of equatorial populations are roughly twice as long as those of temperate populations. Interestingly, this pattern of latitudinal variation is not observed for any daytime measure of activity or sleep. We also found evidence for geographic variation for sunrise anticipation. Our RNA-seq experiment carried out on heads from a low and high latitude population identified a large number of gene expression differences, most of which were time dependent. Differentially expressed genes were enriched in circadian regulated genes and enriched in genes potentially under spatially varying selection. CONCLUSION: Our results are consistent with a mechanistic and selective decoupling of nighttime and daytime activity. Furthermore, the present study suggests that natural selection plays a major role in generating transcriptomic variation associated with circadian behaviors. Finally, we identified genomic variants plausibly causally associated with the observed behavioral and transcriptomic variation. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12862-015-0316-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-43741772015-03-27 Evidence that natural selection maintains genetic variation for sleep in Drosophila melanogaster Svetec, Nicolas Zhao, Li Saelao, Perot Chiu, Joanna C Begun, David J BMC Evol Biol Research Article BACKGROUND: Drosophila melanogaster often shows correlations between latitude and phenotypic or genetic variation on different continents, which suggests local adaptation with respect to a heterogeneous environment. Previous phenotypic analyses of latitudinal clines have investigated mainly physiological, morphological, or life-history traits. Here, we studied latitudinal variation in sleep in D. melanogaster populations from North and Central America. In parallel, we used RNA-seq to identify interpopulation gene expression differences. RESULTS: We found that in D. melanogaster the average nighttime sleep bout duration exhibits a latitudinal cline such that sleep bouts of equatorial populations are roughly twice as long as those of temperate populations. Interestingly, this pattern of latitudinal variation is not observed for any daytime measure of activity or sleep. We also found evidence for geographic variation for sunrise anticipation. Our RNA-seq experiment carried out on heads from a low and high latitude population identified a large number of gene expression differences, most of which were time dependent. Differentially expressed genes were enriched in circadian regulated genes and enriched in genes potentially under spatially varying selection. CONCLUSION: Our results are consistent with a mechanistic and selective decoupling of nighttime and daytime activity. Furthermore, the present study suggests that natural selection plays a major role in generating transcriptomic variation associated with circadian behaviors. Finally, we identified genomic variants plausibly causally associated with the observed behavioral and transcriptomic variation. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12862-015-0316-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2015-03-13 /pmc/articles/PMC4374177/ /pubmed/25887180 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-015-0316-2 Text en © Svetec et al.; licensee BioMed Central. 2015 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Svetec, Nicolas
Zhao, Li
Saelao, Perot
Chiu, Joanna C
Begun, David J
Evidence that natural selection maintains genetic variation for sleep in Drosophila melanogaster
title Evidence that natural selection maintains genetic variation for sleep in Drosophila melanogaster
title_full Evidence that natural selection maintains genetic variation for sleep in Drosophila melanogaster
title_fullStr Evidence that natural selection maintains genetic variation for sleep in Drosophila melanogaster
title_full_unstemmed Evidence that natural selection maintains genetic variation for sleep in Drosophila melanogaster
title_short Evidence that natural selection maintains genetic variation for sleep in Drosophila melanogaster
title_sort evidence that natural selection maintains genetic variation for sleep in drosophila melanogaster
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4374177/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25887180
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-015-0316-2
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