Data from: Pleiotropy in the wild: the dormancy gene DOG1 exerts cascading control on life-cycles

In the wild, organismal life cycles occur within seasonal cycles, so shifts in the timing of developmental transitions can alter the seasonal environment experienced subsequently. Effects of genes that control the timing of prior developmental events can therefore be magnified in the wild because they determine seasonal conditions experienced by subsequent life stages, which can influence subsequent phenotypic expression. We examined such environmentally-induced pleiotropy of developmental-timing genes in a field experiment with Arabidopsis thaliana. When studied in the field under natural seasonal variation, an A. thaliana seed-dormancy gene, Delay Of Germination 1 (DOG1), was found to influence not only germination, but also flowering time, overall life history, and fitness. Flowering time of the previous generation, in turn, imposed maternal effects that altered germination, the effects of DOG1 alleles, and the direction of natural selection on these alleles. Thus under natural conditions, germination genes act as flowering genes and potentially vice versa. These results illustrate how seasonal environmental variation can alter pleiotropic effects of developmental-timing genes, such that effects of genes that regulate prior life stages ramify to influence subsequent life stages. In this case, one gene acting at the seed stage impacted the entire life cycle.

在自然环境中，生物的生命周期依托季节周期运行，因此发育转变节点的时序偏移，会改变后续生命阶段所处的季节环境。调控此前发育事件时序的基因，其效应在自然野外环境中会被放大——这类基因决定了后续生命阶段所处的季节条件，而这些条件又会进一步影响后续的表型表达。
我们以拟南芥（Arabidopsis thaliana）为材料开展田间试验，探究了发育时序基因的环境诱导性多效性（pleiotropy）。在模拟自然季节波动的田间环境中研究时，拟南芥的种子休眠基因——萌发延迟1（Delay Of Germination 1，DOG1）——被证实不仅调控种子萌发，还会影响开花时间、整体生活史与进化适合度（fitness）。上代植株的开花时序反过来会产生母体效应，进而改变种子萌发过程、DOG1等位基因的效应，以及这些等位基因所受的自然选择方向。因此在自然条件下，萌发基因可发挥开花基因的功能，反之亦然。
本研究结果揭示了季节环境波动如何重塑发育时序基因的多效性效应，使得调控前期生命阶段的基因效应得以级联扩散，进而影响后续生命阶段。在本案例中，仅在种子阶段发挥功能的单个基因，便可影响整个生命周期。