TY - JOUR
T1 - Functional genomic insights into the environmental determinants of mammalian fitness
AU - Snyder-Mackler, Noah
AU - Lea, Amanda J.
N1 - Funding Information: We thank Jenny Tung and Rachel Johnston for their thoughtful feedback on an earlier version of the manuscript. This work was supported by National Science Foundation ( SBE-1723237 ) and National Institutes of Health ( R00-AG051764 ), and a postdoctoral fellowship to AJL from the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation . Publisher Copyright: © 2018 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2018/12
Y1 - 2018/12
N2 - Both the social and physical environment shape health, reproduction, and survival across many species, and identifying how these effects manifest at the molecular level has long been a priority in medicine and evolutionary biology. The recent rise of functional genomics has enabled researchers to gain new insights into how environmental inputs shape variation in gene regulation, and consequently, downstream organism-level traits. Here, we discuss recent work on this topic, as well as key knowledge gaps. Research in this area spans a wide range of taxa, but we focus our review on mammalian species because of their close evolutionary proximity to humans and because of their relevance for understanding human health. Improving our understanding of how the environment and the genome are connected promises to shed new light on the mechanisms underlying environmentally-induced disease in humans, as well as the evolution of environmental sensitivity more generally.
AB - Both the social and physical environment shape health, reproduction, and survival across many species, and identifying how these effects manifest at the molecular level has long been a priority in medicine and evolutionary biology. The recent rise of functional genomics has enabled researchers to gain new insights into how environmental inputs shape variation in gene regulation, and consequently, downstream organism-level traits. Here, we discuss recent work on this topic, as well as key knowledge gaps. Research in this area spans a wide range of taxa, but we focus our review on mammalian species because of their close evolutionary proximity to humans and because of their relevance for understanding human health. Improving our understanding of how the environment and the genome are connected promises to shed new light on the mechanisms underlying environmentally-induced disease in humans, as well as the evolution of environmental sensitivity more generally.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.gde.2018.08.001
DO - 10.1016/j.gde.2018.08.001
M3 - Review article
C2 - 30142491
SN - 0959-437X
VL - 53
SP - 105
EP - 112
JO - Current Opinion in Genetics and Development
JF - Current Opinion in Genetics and Development
ER -