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Adaptation prevents the extinction of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii under toxic beryllium

The current biodiversity crisis represents a historic challenge for natural communities: the environmental rate of change exceeds the population’s adaptation capability. Integrating both ecological and evolutionary responses is necessary to make reliable predictions regarding the loss of biodiversit...

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Autores principales: Baselga-Cervera, Beatriz, Costas, Eduardo, Bustillo-Avendaño, Estéfano, García-Balboa, Camino
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4806628/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27019784
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1823
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author Baselga-Cervera, Beatriz
Costas, Eduardo
Bustillo-Avendaño, Estéfano
García-Balboa, Camino
author_facet Baselga-Cervera, Beatriz
Costas, Eduardo
Bustillo-Avendaño, Estéfano
García-Balboa, Camino
author_sort Baselga-Cervera, Beatriz
collection PubMed
description The current biodiversity crisis represents a historic challenge for natural communities: the environmental rate of change exceeds the population’s adaptation capability. Integrating both ecological and evolutionary responses is necessary to make reliable predictions regarding the loss of biodiversity. The race against extinction from an eco-evolutionary perspective is gaining importance in ecological risk assessment. Here, we performed a classical study of population dynamics—a fluctuation analysis—and evaluated the results from an adaption perspective. Fluctuation analysis, widely used with microorganisms, is an effective empirical procedure to study adaptation under strong selective pressure because it incorporates the factors that influence demographic, genetic and environmental changes. The adaptation of phytoplankton to beryllium (Be) is of interest because human activities are increasing the concentration of Be in freshwater reserves; therefore, predicting the effects of human-induced pollutants is necessary for proper risk assessment. The fluctuation analysis was performed with phytoplankton, specifically, the freshwater microalgae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, under acute Be exposure. High doses of Be led to massive microalgae death; however, by conducting a fluctuation analysis experiment, we found that C. reinhardtii was able to adapt to 33 mg/l of Be due to pre-existing genetic variability. The rescuing adapting genotype presented a mutation rate of 9.61 × 10(−6) and a frequency of 10.42 resistant cells per million wild-type cells. The genetic adaptation pathway that was experimentally obtained agreed with the theoretical models of evolutionary rescue (ER). Furthermore, the rescuing genotype presented phenotypic and physiologic differences from the wild-type genotype, was 25% smaller than the Be-resistant genotype and presented a lower fitness and quantum yield performance. The abrupt distinctions between the wild-type and the Be-resistant genotype suggest a pleiotropic effect mediated by an advantageous mutation; however, no sequencing confirmation was performed.
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spelling pubmed-48066282016-03-25 Adaptation prevents the extinction of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii under toxic beryllium Baselga-Cervera, Beatriz Costas, Eduardo Bustillo-Avendaño, Estéfano García-Balboa, Camino PeerJ Ecology The current biodiversity crisis represents a historic challenge for natural communities: the environmental rate of change exceeds the population’s adaptation capability. Integrating both ecological and evolutionary responses is necessary to make reliable predictions regarding the loss of biodiversity. The race against extinction from an eco-evolutionary perspective is gaining importance in ecological risk assessment. Here, we performed a classical study of population dynamics—a fluctuation analysis—and evaluated the results from an adaption perspective. Fluctuation analysis, widely used with microorganisms, is an effective empirical procedure to study adaptation under strong selective pressure because it incorporates the factors that influence demographic, genetic and environmental changes. The adaptation of phytoplankton to beryllium (Be) is of interest because human activities are increasing the concentration of Be in freshwater reserves; therefore, predicting the effects of human-induced pollutants is necessary for proper risk assessment. The fluctuation analysis was performed with phytoplankton, specifically, the freshwater microalgae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, under acute Be exposure. High doses of Be led to massive microalgae death; however, by conducting a fluctuation analysis experiment, we found that C. reinhardtii was able to adapt to 33 mg/l of Be due to pre-existing genetic variability. The rescuing adapting genotype presented a mutation rate of 9.61 × 10(−6) and a frequency of 10.42 resistant cells per million wild-type cells. The genetic adaptation pathway that was experimentally obtained agreed with the theoretical models of evolutionary rescue (ER). Furthermore, the rescuing genotype presented phenotypic and physiologic differences from the wild-type genotype, was 25% smaller than the Be-resistant genotype and presented a lower fitness and quantum yield performance. The abrupt distinctions between the wild-type and the Be-resistant genotype suggest a pleiotropic effect mediated by an advantageous mutation; however, no sequencing confirmation was performed. PeerJ Inc. 2016-03-21 /pmc/articles/PMC4806628/ /pubmed/27019784 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1823 Text en ©2016 Baselga-Cervera et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 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, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Ecology
Baselga-Cervera, Beatriz
Costas, Eduardo
Bustillo-Avendaño, Estéfano
García-Balboa, Camino
Adaptation prevents the extinction of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii under toxic beryllium
title Adaptation prevents the extinction of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii under toxic beryllium
title_full Adaptation prevents the extinction of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii under toxic beryllium
title_fullStr Adaptation prevents the extinction of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii under toxic beryllium
title_full_unstemmed Adaptation prevents the extinction of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii under toxic beryllium
title_short Adaptation prevents the extinction of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii under toxic beryllium
title_sort adaptation prevents the extinction of chlamydomonas reinhardtii under toxic beryllium
topic Ecology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4806628/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27019784
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1823
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