Phylogenomic Approaches to Study Adaptive Evolution in Mammals: From Aging to Aquatic Lifestyles

Abstract

The natural world is full of valuable lessons about genetic adaptation as organisms respond to changing conditions around them. Deciphering these changes is a major goal of evolutionary genetics. Advances have been made through phylogenomic approaches using the wealth of closely related genome sequences in mammals. These studies bring us lessons about the adaptive capacity allowed by the evolutionary process as well as the underlying genetic mechanisms controlling important traits. Diverse methods are now routinely used to identify the genetic basis of these adaptations. These reveal new functions of genes and regulatory regions that have responded to changes in lifestyle, such as aquatic life and flight, as well as major life history axes, such as lifespan. Phylogenomic studies have been equally revealing of specific traits that evolve in response to different selective pressures, such as hair formation and vocal learning. These approaches continue to develop to overcome challenges inherent in information-poor regulatory regions to find changes to gene regulatory networks as well. The development of these approaches is expected to accelerate as new tools, such as machine learning models, are incorporated and deployed on ever denser phylogenies containing new interesting traits.