Meeting Abstract

90.2  Monday, Jan. 6 13:45  Gene expression and genetic variation in the heat stress response of garter snake life-history ecotypes SCHWARTZ, TS*; MCGAUGH, S; BRONIKOWSKI, AM; University of Alabama at Birmingham; Washington University; Iowa State University tschwartz@uab.edu

The emerging field of conservation physiology requires experimental data to address critical questions on the mechanistic basis for an organism’s ability to persist in a habitat. For example, what molecular networks are activated under physiological stress and what traits are affected by those networks? Also, to what extent does plasticity in these molecular networks allow for physiological acclimation to a changing environment? To what extent is there genetic variation in the genes involved in the response? Because both the mean and variance of environmental temperature are predicted to change across large landscapes, and because temperature has a strong influence on molecular reactions thereby modulating the degree to which organisms can respond to changing thermal conditions, the focus of our experimental work is on transcriptomic responses to temperature. Here, we present a large-scale transcriptome study of heat stress in a poikilothermic reptile – the garter snake, Thamnophis elegans. Our study populations have been models of ecological and evolutionary genetics for the past quarter century. We bring this long-term understanding of a natural ecological system to bear on the questions of how animals respond to physiological stress. We characterize the plastic responses of liver transcriptomes to heat stress using Illumina RNAseq, and identify molecular networks or pathways that are affected. We investigate those pathways further for genetic variation within and across populations.