Data for: Weaker selection on genes with treatment-specific expression consistent with a limit on plasticity evolution in Arabidopsis thaliana

Differential gene expression between environments often underlies
phenotypic plasticity. However, environment-specific expression patterns
are hypothesized to relax selection on genes, and thus limit plasticity
evolution. We collated over 27 terabases of RNA-sequencing data
on Arabidopsis thaliana from over 300 peer-reviewed
studies and 200 treatment conditions to investigate this hypothesis.
Consistent with relaxed selection, genes with more treatment-specific
expression have higher levels of nucleotide diversity and divergence at
nonsynonymous sites but lack stronger signals of positive selection. This
result persisted even after controlling for expression level, gene length,
GC content, the tissue specificity of expression, and technical variation
between studies. Overall, our investigation supports the existence of a
hypothesized trade-off between the environment specificity of a gene’s
expression and the strength of selection on said gene in A.
thaliana. Future studies should leverage multiple genome-scale datasets to
tease apart the contributions of many variables in limiting plasticity
evolution.