Adapting to a Warmer World: Leveraging Model Microbes, Experimental Evolution, and Comparative Genomics

The alarming increase of temperature and extreme climate events forces organisms to adapt, migrate, or perish.

Tailoring conservation practices to at-risk species requires a sound understanding of their evolutionary potential but for most organisms the genetic basis of thermal adaptation and resilience to future change are unknown.

I argue that to manage the impact of global warming sustainably, we need to explore responses to ecologically relevant warming scenarios, and we need to do this in a large range of genomic and ecological backgrounds, to generate broadly applicable knowledge.

Here, I propose experimental evolution with 8 species of Saccharomyces yeast that vary widely in temperature preferences (between 15°C and 35°C), providing a rich source of genomic and phenotypic variation.

I will 1) evolve populations for >1000 generations under 3 types of heat stress and track adaptive dynamics in real time, 2) apply comparative genomics to dissect the genetic architecture of thermotolerance, and 3) use allele swapping to measure mutational effects.

This research will provide unprecedented insight into the drivers and constraints of thermal adaptation across deep phylogenetic rifts, covering millions of years of evolutionary divergence.

It lays the groundwork for studying long-term evolutionary change at a global scale, and provides a powerful tool affording questions and insights not normally possible within the realm of traditional climate change research.