Meeting Abstract
Changes in cis- regulatory regions are thought to play a major role in the genetic basis of adaptation. However, few studies have linked cis- regulatory variation with environmental adaptation in natural populations. Here, using a combination of exome and RNA-seq data, we perform expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL) mapping and allele-specific expression analyses to study the genetic architecture of regulatory variation in wild house mice (Mus musculus domesticus) using individuals from 5 populations collected along a latitudinal cline in eastern North America. Mice in this transect show clinal patterns of variation in several traits, including body mass. Mice are larger in more northern latitudes, in accordance with Bergmann’s rule. We identify genes with clinally varying cis-eQTL where expression level is correlated with latitude. Among these clinal outliers, we identify two genes (Adam17 and Bcat2) with cis-eQTL that are associated with body mass variation and for which expression is correlated with body mass within and between populations. These findings demonstrate the power of combining gene expression data with scans for selection to identify candidate genes involved in adaptive phenotypic evolution and also provide strong evidence for cis- regulatory elements as essential loci of adaptive clinal evolution in natural populations.
