On the post-glacial spread of human commensal Arabidopsis thaliana.
Recent work has shown that Arabidopsis thaliana contains genetic groups originating from different ice age refugia, with one particular group comprising over 95% of the current worldwide population. In Europe, relicts of other groups can be found in local populations along the Mediterranean Sea. Here we provide evidence that these 'relicts' occupied post-glacial Eurasia first and were later replaced by the invading 'non-relicts', which expanded through the east-west axis of Eurasia, leaving traces of admixture in the north and south of the species range. The non-relict expansion was likely associated with human activity and led to a demographic replacement similar to what occurred in humans. Introgressed genomic regions from relicts are associated with flowering time and enriched for genes associated with environmental conditions, such as root cap development or metal ion trans-membrane transport, which suggest that admixture with locally adapted relicts helped the non-relicts colonize new habitats.
Gregor Mendel Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna Biocenter (VBC), Dr Bohr-Gasse 3, 1030 Vienna, Austria.|Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology &Institute of Plant Biology, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Section 4, Roosevelt Rd, 10617 Taipei, Taiwan.
Cheng-Ruei
0000-0002-1913-9964
CR
Lee
Gregor Mendel Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna Biocenter (VBC), Dr Bohr-Gasse 3, 1030 Vienna, Austria.
Hannes
0000-0001-7866-7313
H
Svardal
Gregor Mendel Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna Biocenter (VBC), Dr Bohr-Gasse 3, 1030 Vienna, Austria.
Ashley
A
Farlow
Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Spemannstrasse 35, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.
Moises
M
Exposito-Alonso
Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Spemannstrasse 35, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.
Wei
W
Ding
Gregor Mendel Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna Biocenter (VBC), Dr Bohr-Gasse 3, 1030 Vienna, Austria.
Polina
P
Novikova
Departamento de Genética Molecular de Plantas, Centro Nacional de Biotecnología (CNB), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Madrid 28049, Spain.
Carlos
C
Alonso-Blanco
Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Spemannstrasse 35, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.
Detlef
D
Weigel
Gregor Mendel Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna Biocenter (VBC), Dr Bohr-Gasse 3, 1030 Vienna, Austria.
Magnus
0000-0001-7178-9748
M
Nordborg
D000222:Adaptation, Physiological / Q000235:genetics; D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology*; D020029:Base Pairing / Q000235:genetics; D032461:Chromosomes, Plant / Q000235:genetics; D035264:Flowers / Q000502:physiology; D063990:Gene Ontology; D018745:Genome, Plant; D005843:Geography; D006239:Haplotypes / Q000235:genetics; D006801:Humans; D006824:Hybridization, Genetic; D046448:Ice Cover; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide / Q000235:genetics