Phenotypic plasticity, reaction norm, and genotype by environment interaction

Phenotypic variation of living organisms is shaped by genetics, environment,reaction norm figure and their interaction. Understanding phenotypic plasticity under natural conditions is hindered by the apparently complex environment and the interacting genes and pathways. With two genetic populations (sorghum and rice) showing dynamic changes in flowering time, we have demonstrated that identifying an environmental index to quantitatively connect environments was the key first step to not only undercovering the gene effect continuum along an environmental gradient but also developing a systematic genome-wide performance prediction framework. Connection among genotypes can be through either genotype-specific reaction-norm parameters or genome-wide marker-effect continua. These parallel genome-wide approaches were demonstrated for in-season and on-target performance prediction by simultaneously exploiting genomics, environment profiling, and performance information. Integrating knowledge from genomics, gene cloning and functional characterization, and environment quantification, we proposed a conceptual model with multiple levels of reaction norms to help bridge the gaps among individual gene discovery, field-level phenotypic plasticity, and genomic diversity and adaptation.

PI: Yu, Jianming.
Funding: The Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grant 2011-67009-30614 from the US Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture, National Science Foundation Grant IOS-1238142, the Kansas State University Center for Sorghum Improvement, the Iowa State University Raymond F. Baker Center for Plant Breeding, and the Iowa State University Plant Sciences Institute.

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