Adaptive Shifts in Gene Regulation Underlie a Developmental Delay in Thermogenesis in High-Altitude Deer Mice

We sequenced skeletal muscle and brown adipose tissue transcriptomes of deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus) across a critical post-natal developmental window. We determined the regulatory basis of evolutionary changes in the development of thermogenesis (a performance metric critical to survival) in a lab-raised high-altitude population of deer mice, compared to a lowland population thought to represent the ancestral state.