Analysis of Correlations Between Climate and Molecular Adaptive Evolution of Wild Barley with Geographical Information Systems (GIS)

Abstract

Climate is one of the most important factors determining the adaptive evolution of plants. In this study, 44 different populations of wild barley were used as materials to analyze the diversity of 17 genes (495 sequences), in order to study the influence of different climatic conditions on adaptive evolution of wild barley. A Geographical Information System (GIS) provided tools to visually present and analyse the geographical distribution of number of variable positions in the alignments and the differentiation index. 19 different bio factors were classified into 4 main component groups, and OLS Regression was used to analyze the differentiation coefficient of main climatic factors and the expression of gene differentiation degree. DHN family, a drought and temperature related gene family, showed significant spatial correlation with main climatic factors. Meanwhile, the results of other genes, which reported insignificant effects on drought or heat tolerance, were quite contrary. The phenotypes of plants were observed after the interaction of plant genotype with the environment. Simultaneously, the environment also has influence on some special genes. New analysis methods using GIS could be used to research the complex relationship between plant phenotype, plant genotype and the environment.