Examining adaptive evolution of immune activity: opportunities provided by gastropods in the age of 'omics'.

Parasites threaten all free-living organisms, including molluscs. Understanding the evolution of immune defence traits in natural host populations is crucial for predicting their long-term performance under continuous infection risk. Adaptive trait evolution requires that traits are subject to selection (i.

Transcriptome profiling of Lymnaea stagnalis (Gastropoda) for ecoimmunological research.

Background: Host immune function can contribute to numerous ecological/evolutionary processes. Ecoimmunological studies, however, typically use one/few phenotypic immune assays and thus do not consider the complexity of the immune system. Therefore, "omics" resources that allow quantifying immune activity across multiple pathways are needed for ecoimmunological models.

Experimental and Field Data Support Range Expansion in an Allopolyploid Arabidopsis Owing to Parental Legacy of Heavy Metal Hyperaccumulation.

Empirical evidence is limited on whether allopolyploid species combine or merge parental adaptations to broaden habitats. The allopolyploid is a hybrid of the two diploid parents and . is a facultative heavy metal hyperaccumulator, and may be found in cadmium (Cd) and zinc (Zn) contaminated environments, as well as non-contaminated environments.

Conserved but Attenuated Parental Gene Expression in Allopolyploids: Constitutive Zinc Hyperaccumulation in the Allotetraploid Arabidopsis kamchatica.

Allopolyploidization combines parental genomes and often confers broader species distribution. However, little is known about parentally transmitted gene expression underlying quantitative traits following allopolyploidization because of the complexity of polyploid genomes. The allopolyploid species Arabidopsis kamchatica is a natural hybrid of the zinc hyperaccumulator Arabidopsis halleri and of the nonaccumulator Arabidopsis lyrata We found that A.