Next-gen sequencing reveals climate change adaptation

US biologists have proposed next-generation sequencing (NGS) as a way to provide fresh insight into populations’ responses to a changing world. Writing in the journal BioScience, Jonathon H Stillman and Eric Armstrong explained that “genomics approaches have the potential to transform the way in which ecological studies can be conducted by providing powerful tools in which genotype and phenotype data of diverse ‘wild’ populations can be measured with a never-before-possible level of fine-scale resolution”.

NGS, which makes it possible to analyse enormous numbers of short pieces of DNA very quickly, allows environmental biologists to assess the presence or absence of certain gene variants within local populations - which could point to selection for certain climate-adapted traits. Alterations in gene expression are also accessible through NGS and offer further information about population responses.

For example, in an NGS study on coral, researchers found that genes associated with cellular stress responses were down-regulated in a population that had become heat adapted. The down-regulation of CSR genes is “consistent with evidence suggesting that there is an evolutionary cost in maintaining elevated levels of expression in those genes”, according to the study authors.

But the expense of NGS, coupled with the lack of funding already received by environmental biologists, means the broad-scale implementation of the technology of NGS could be a challenge. Stillman and Armstrong suggest there will need to be “new thinking” about how to fund researchers looking to understand and mitigate the impacts of climate change, which they describe as “one of the largest but most poorly funded problems facing society today”.