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SUMMARY:Evolutionary Systems Biology of Adaptation to Environmental Stress:
  Insights from High-Altitude Deer Mice
LOCATION:Anatomy/Zoology Building W118
TZID:America/Denver
DTSTART:20174001T000000
UID:2026-04-18-01-49-26@natsci.colostate.edu
DTSTAMP:20260418T014926
Description:Both phenotypic plasticity and genotypic specialization can con
 tribute to differences in physiological performance in species that are lo
 cally adapted to different environments. However\, their relative contribu
 tions are expected to vary with respect to the spatial and temporal grain 
 of environmental variation. In species that are distributed across steep e
 levational gradients\, environmental conditions change dramatically over s
 mall spatial scales\, and as a result\, adaptive variation in physiologica
 l performance may be attributable to transcriptional plasticity in regulat
 ory networks that underlie trait differences between high- and low-elevati
 on populations. In this talk\, I will discuss a series of common-garden ex
 periments that were designed to examine the role of regulatory plasticity 
 in evolutionary adaptation to high-elevation conditions in deer mice (Pero
 myscus maniculatus)\, the species with broadest elevational distribution o
 f any North American mammal. Using a system-biology framework\, I will dis
 cuss our efforts to integrate genomic surveys of DNA sequence polymorphism
  and genome-wide transcriptional profiles with functional assays of metabo
 lic enzyme activities\, cellular and tissue-level phenotypes\, and measure
 s of whole-animal performance. Highland mice exhibit greater thermogenic c
 apacities than lowland mice under hypoxia\, and this trait is associated w
 ith increased survival at high elevation. Our recent work has shown that t
 his enhanced performance is associated with upregulation of transcriptiona
 l modules that influence several hierarchical steps in the O2 transport ca
 scade\, including tissue O2 diffusion (angiogenesis) and tissue O2 utiliza
 tion (muscle fiber composition\, metabolic fuel use\, and cellular oxidati
 ve capacity). Most of these performance-related transcriptomic and physiol
 ogical changes occur over physiological and developmental timescales\, sug
 gesting that regulatory plasticity makes important contributions to fitnes
 s-related physiological performance in highland deer mice. 4:00 pm
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