Transcriptional activity of transposable elements along an elevational gradient in Arabidopsis arenosa

作者：Guillaume Wos, Rimjhim Roy Choudhury, Filip Kolář, Christian Parisod · 发表于：Mobile DNA · 年份：2021 · DOI：10.1186/s13100-021-00236-0 · 被引用次数：49 · 研究领域：Chromosomal and Genetic Variations、Plant Molecular Biology Research、Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies

BACKGROUND: Plant genomes can respond rapidly to environmental changes and transposable elements (TEs) arise as important drivers contributing to genome dynamics. Although some elements were reported to be induced by various abiotic or biotic factors, there is a lack of general understanding on how environment influences the activity and diversity of TEs. Here, we combined common garden experiment with short-read sequencing to investigate genomic abundance and expression of 2245 consensus TE sequences (containing retrotransposons and DNA transposons) in an alpine environment in Arabidopsis arenosa. To disentangle general trends from local differentiation, we leveraged four foothill-alpine population pairs from different mountain regions. Seeds of each of the eight populations were raised under four treatments that differed in temperature and irradiance, two factors varying with elevation. RNA-seq analysis was performed on leaves of young plants to test for the effect of elevation and subsequently of temperature and irradiance on expression of TE sequences. RESULTS: Genomic abundance of the 2245 consensus TE sequences varied greatly between the mountain regions in line with neutral divergence among the regions, representing distinct genetic lineages of A. arenosa. Accounting for intraspecific variation in abundance, we found consistent transcriptomic response for some TE sequences across the different pairs of foothill-alpine populations suggesting parallelism in TE expression...