Landscape genomics is one of many strategies used to identify relationships between environmental factors and the genetic

adaptation In biology, adaptation has three related meanings. Firstly, it is the dynamic evolutionary process of natural selection that fits organisms to their environment, enhancing their evolutionary fitness. Secondly, it is a state reached by the po ...

of organisms in response to these factors. Landscape genomics combines aspects of

landscape ecology Landscape ecology is the science of studying and improving relationships between ecological processes in the environment and particular ecosystems. This is done within a variety of landscape scales, development spatial patterns, and organizati ...

population genetics Population genetics is a subfield of genetics that deals with genetic differences within and between populations, and is a part of evolutionary biology. Studies in this branch of biology examine such phenomena as adaptation, speciation, and pop ...

and

landscape genetics Landscape genetics is the scientific discipline that combines population genetics and landscape ecology. It broadly encompasses any study that analyses plant or animal population genetic data in conjunction with data on the landscape features and ...

. The latter addresses how landscape features influence the population structure and gene flow of organisms across time and space. The field of landscape genomics is distinct from landscape genetics in that it is not focused on the neutral genetic processes, but considers, in addition to neutral processes such as drift and gene flow, explicitly adaptive processes, i.e. the role of

natural selection Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Charle ...

Population genomics Population genomics is the large-scale comparison of DNA sequences of populations. Population genomics is a neologism that is associated with population genetics. Population genomics studies genome-wide effects to improve our understanding of micro ...

utilizes outlier tests to identify genetic variation, which rely on identifying high genetic variation in populations. However, more subtle forms of genetic variation can be detected in landscape genomics. Additionally, outlier tests do not aim to, nor do they facilitate the identification of selection pressures from the local environment that caused genetic variation. Contrarily, landscape genomics aims to identify changes in the genome directly resulting from local environmental factors.

History

Landscape genomics is a relatively new field, made possible by recent technological advances in genetic mapping.

Genomics Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes as well as its hierarchical, three-dim ...

is the study of the genome, otherwise known as the collection of all of the genes in one organism. Landscape genetics uses technology capable of monitoring 5-20 genetic markers at a time, whereas technology has advanced so that it is now capable of mapping an entire genome, including additional types of genetic markers. Landscape genomics analyzes adaptive markers, whereas landscape genetics only analyzes neutral markers. The field of genomics began to grow in the 1970s when new technology was discovered by A.M. Maxam and W. Gilbert, and continued to advance with the widely recognized

Human Genome Project The Human Genome Project (HGP) was an international scientific research project with the goal of determining the base pairs that make up human DNA, and of identifying, mapping and sequencing all of the genes of the human genome from both a ...

. It was the application of the technology and strategies used in genomics to landscape genetics that created the field of landscape genomics.

Methods

Landscape genomics makes use of several fields of study. Environmental association analysis is used to link adaptive processes and genetic markers to local environmental factors. This is often done by selecting one environmental factor, e.g. water salinity or altitude. Continuous data from this factor is then aligned with

genetic polymorphisms A gene is said to be polymorphic if more than one allele occupies that gene's locus within a population. In addition to having more than one allele at a specific locus, each allele must also occur in the population at a rate of at least 1% to gen ...

data from an organism inhabiting the same time and place, and data analysis can then be conducted to detect potential correlations. Gene sequencing is also necessary in order to identify the genetic markers that are to be studied in correlation with environmental factors.

Applications in research

Landscape genomics has provided an opportunity to examine potential implications of

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...

based on how organisms respond to changing temperatures and climate. In one example, researchers studied several populations of the black alder tree, and through landscape genomics found that it is highly adaptive to temperature and latitude changes. This has meaningful implications, as it can help researchers predict how the black alder will react to climate change in the future. Together with complementary research on the ecological role of the black alder, it is also possible to predict how the environment surrounding black alder populations will change.

References

{{Reflist Evolutionary ecology Landscape ecology Population genetics