Pr. Martin Lascoux, Professor at the Department of Ecology and Genetics, Uppsala University (Sweden) will be at INRA-Nancy on Dec 15th for the PhD dissertation of Antoine Persoons. He will give a seminar in the conference room of INRA Nancy at 10:00 am on the following topic:

“Clinal variation and the genetic basis of adaptive traits in trees”

Here is an abstract of his seminar:

Identifying the loci underlying the variation in quantitative traits and detecting the selection acting on them remains, to this day, one of the main challenges in biology. Genome wide association studies (GWAS) have become the main approach to identify the genetic factors controlling complex traits. Limitations of GWAS have, however, started to become evident and different strategies have been offered to alleviate those. In particular, GWAS have limited power unless very large datasets are used. They therefore remain prohibitively expensive, and often not so informative, for non-model organisms with limited or nascent genome resources such as forest trees. So, at least in the short term, a more targeted strategy, combining common gardens, population genetics, physiological and expression studies of candidate genes remains a very fruitful alternative. We will illustrate this with recent studies of clinal variation in phenological traits in forest trees, with special focus on boreal conifers, oaks and poplars. Some general features emerge from these different studies: first, they confirm the presence of strong latitudinal clines in phenological traits such as growth cessation. Second, most of the studies highlight the importance of genes belonging to the photoperiodic pathway and the circadian clock in the control of growth cessation. For instance, in both Norway and Siberian spruces, FTL2, a homolog of the main integrators for flowering time in A. thaliana, exhibits evidence of local adaptation and significant latitudinal variation in expression. Finally, the study of parallel clines in phenological traits, offers a first glimpse at the importance of parallel or convergent evolution in forest trees. They thereby provide us with a bit of information on the genetic architecture of important adaptive traits.

Please join us for this seminar.