Abstract
Anthropogenic activities have substantially modified natural forested ecosystems around the world through species exploitation, land-use changes, soil degradation, pollution and introduction of exotic species. The impacts of these activities are being exacerbated today by climate change that is expected to become more severe over the coming decades. Modern landscape genomics has made advances in identifying genes that are associated with phenotypic expression, but they have been unable to prove that the associations are more than correlative. The threats to biological diversity raised by climate change, underscore the need to have an improved understanding of the genetic basis of phenotypic traits. In sedentary, long-lived tree species this becomes of utmost importance, as the success of populations is likely to depend, in large part, on existing standing genetic variation. The most recent technologies of gene editing (CRISPR/Cas9) promise to be an elegant approach that will move forest tree genomics to the next level, by allowing the rigorous testing of gene function and its role in the adaptation of trees to their environment. This perspectives paper looks at how genome editing technologies can be used to advance our understanding of the role genes play in adaptation to climate change in woody plants. We discuss the different CRISPR modes than can be used in studies of adaptive traits in perennial species.
Highlights
Understanding the genetic basis of adaptation is a fundamental question in ecology and evolution that has taken on new significance with the threat of climate change
There are significant obstacles to working with woody plants, such as the long generation time, we believe that gene editing will become a vital tool for understanding and managing the genetic variants that play a role in adaptation to climatic stress and the challenges that trees will face by climate change (Nellemann et al, 2009)
Ecologists and plant scientists can benefit from using this technique as it has the advantage that it can instantaneously generate alteration to genes without creating tDNA insertion
Summary
Understanding the genetic basis of adaptation is a fundamental question in ecology and evolution that has taken on new significance with the threat of climate change. Advances offered by generation sequencing (NGS) have allowed an unprecedented opportunity to gain whole genome data that should provide new tools to overcome many of the problems faced in understanding the genetic basis of adaptation to environmental variation in forest trees.
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