Comparative transcriptomics and gene expression divergence associated with homoploid hybrid speciation in Argyranthemum

Abstract Ecological isolation is increasingly thought to play an important role in speciation, especially for the origin and reproductive isolation of homoploid hybrid species. However, the extent to which divergent and/or transgressive gene expression changes are involved in speciation is not well studied. In this study, we employ comparative transcriptomics to investigate gene expression changes associated with the origin and evolution of two homoploid hybrid plant species, Argyranthemum sundingii and A. lemsii (Asteraceae). As there is no standard methodology for comparative transcriptomics, we examined five different pipelines for data assembly and analysing gene expression across the four species (two hybrid and two parental). We note biases and problems with all pipelines, and the approach used affected the biological interpretation of the data. Using the approach that we found to be optimal, we identify transcripts showing DE between the parental taxa and between the homoploid hybrid species and their parents; in several cases, putative functions of these DE transcripts have a plausible role in ecological adaptation and could be the cause or consequence of ecological speciation. Although independently derived, the homoploid hybrid species have converged on similar expression phenotypes, likely due to adaptation to similar habitats.

Citation

Oliver W White, Alfredo Reyes-Betancort, Mark A Carine, Mark A Chapman, Comparative transcriptomics and gene expression divergence associated with homoploid hybrid speciation in Argyranthemum, G3 Genes|Genomes|Genetics, Volume 13, Issue 10, October 2023, jkad158, https://doi.org/10.1093/g3journal/jkad158

Type

Journal Article

Item Description

Copyright © The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Genetics Society of America. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The attached file is the published version of the article.
NHM Repository

ISSN

2160-1836

EISSN

2160-1836

License

openAccess

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