ArticleNature communications2018
Evolutionary adaptations to new environments generally reverse plastic phenotypic changes.
Article in Nature communications, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 74 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
74 citing papers in PubMed, 174 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Multi-Organ Comparative Transcriptomic Study on Short-Term and Long-Term Hypoxia Adaptation in Cattle.Biology · 2026Article
- Cell-specific gene expression plasticity in response to hypoxia promotes high-altitude adaptive evolution.Science China. Life sciences · 2026Article
- Contrasting selective signatures of gene expression plasticity in response to antifungal clotrimazole and common environmental stresses in yeast.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Historical contingency limits adaptive diversification in a spatially structured environment.Evolution letters · 2026Article
- Resilience in a Hypoxic World: Fish Respond Through Plasticity in Their Behaviour, Whereas Adaptation and Adaptation of Plasticity in the Behaviour and Metabolism Occur.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Repeatability of gene expression evolution in experimental environmental adaptation.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Adaptive tracking with antagonistic pleiotropy results in seemingly neutral molecular evolution.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Systematic design and evaluation of artificial COSynthetic and systems biotechnology · 2025Article
- Incomplete genetic compensation and countergradient variation of blood-oxygen transport in deer mice.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2025Article
- Minimization of proteome reallocation explains metabolic transition in hierarchical utilization of carbon sources.mSystems · 2025Article
- Whole-Genome Sequencing Identifies Functional Genes for Environmental Adaptability in Chinese Geese.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Functional Divergence of Plant-Derived Thaumatin-Like Protein Genes in Two Closely Related Whitefly Species.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Article
- Whole-genome relaxed selection and molecular constraints in Triplophysa under adapted Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau.BMC genomics · 2025Article
- Plastic responses to past environments shape adaptation to novel selection pressures.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Evolved and Plastic Gene Expression in Adaptation of a Specialist Fly to a Novel Niche.Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- Impacts of limits to adaptation on population and community persistence in a changing environment.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Metabolic plasticity and adaptive evolution inFrontiers in plant science · 2025Review
- Systematic data analysis pipeline for quantitative morphological cell phenotyping.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2024Review
- Article
14 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Organismal adaptation to a new environment may start with plastic phenotypic changes followed by genetic changes, but whether the plastic changes are stepping stones to genetic adaptation is debated. Here we address this question by investigating gene expression and metabolic flux changes in the two-phase adaptation process using transcriptomic data from multiple experimental evolution studies and computational metabolic network analysis, respectively. We discover that genetic changes more frequently reverse than reinforce plastic phenotypic changes in virtually every adaptation. Metabolic network analysis reveals that, even in the presence of plasticity, organismal fitness drops after environmental shifts, but largely recovers through subsequent evolution. Such fitness trajectories explain why plastic phenotypic changes are genetically compensated rather than strengthened. In conclusion, although phenotypic plasticity may serve as an emergency response to a new environment that is necessary for survival, it does not generally facilitate genetic adaptation by bringing the organismal phenotype closer to the new optimum.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.