"From heterosis to reproductive isolation: unravelling the role of genetic interactions in hybrid fitness"Schneemann, HildeWhen genetically differentiated populations come into contact and interbreed, their hybrid offspring will contain a mosaic of the genetic variants characterising the parental lineages, re-arranged into novel combinations. The fitness of these hybrids is central to the evolution of reproductive isolation, but also plays an important role in crop and animal breeding. Remarkably, there are several widespread patterns of hybrid fitness that are observed consistently across widely divergent taxa. These patterns suggest that we can learn something fundamental about general properties of genetic systems by studying data from hybrids. Here I will explore what insights can be gained from a simple fitness landscape model applied to genomic and fitness assay data from controlled crosses and wild admixed populations. I will connect these results to classical models of heterosis and reproductive isolation to demonstrate how this model provides a unifying framework to understand hybrid fitness. |
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