Ecological adaptation is frequently inferred by the comparison of natural populations from different environments. Nevertheless, inference of the selective forces suffers the challenge that many environmental factors covary. With well‐controlled environmental conditions, experimental evolution provides a powerful approach to complement the analysis of natural populations. On the other hand, it is apparent that laboratory conditions differ in many ways from natural environments, which raises the question as to what extent selection responses in experimental evolution studies can inform us about adaptation processes in the wild. In this study, we compared the expression profiles of replicated Drosophila melanogaster populations which have been exposed to two distinct temperature regimes (18/28 and 10/20°C) in the laboratory for more than 80 generations. Using gene‐wise differential expression analysis and co‐expression network analysis, we identified 541 genes and three coregulated gene modules that evolved in the same direction in both temperature regimes, and most of these changes probably reflect an adaptation to the space constraint or diurnal temperature fluctuation that is common in both selection regimes. In total, 203 genes and seven modules evolved temperature‐specific expression changes. Remarkably, we detected a significant overlap of these temperature‐adaptive genes/modules from experimental evolution with temperature‐adaptive genes inferred from natural Drosophila populations covering two different temperature clines. We conclude that well‐designed experimental evolution studies are a powerful tool to dissect evolutionary responses.

中文翻译：

---

自然和实验室进化种群中的平行基因表达进化

生态适应经常通过比较来自不同环境的自然种群来推断。然而，选择性力量的推论面临着许多环境因素共同变化的挑战。在控制良好的环境条件下，实验进化提供了一种强有力的方法来补充自然种群的分析。另一方面，很明显，实验室条件在许多方面与自然环境不同，这就提出了一个问题，即实验进化研究中的选择反应在多大程度上可以告知我们野外的适应过程。在这项研究中，我们比较了复制的黑腹果蝇的表达谱在实验室中暴露于两种不同温度状态（18/28 和 10/20°C）超过 80 代的人群。使用基因差异表达分析和共表达网络分析，我们确定了 541 个基因和三个共同调节的基因模块，它们在两种温度条件下以相同的方向进化，其中大部分变化可能反映了对空间限制或昼夜温度的适应波动在两种选择制度中都很常见。总共有 203 个基因和 7 个模块进化出温度特异性的表达变化。值得注意的是，我们从实验进化中检测到这些温度适应基因/模块与从天然果蝇推断的温度适应基因有显着重叠覆盖两个不同温度曲线的种群。我们得出结论，精心设计的实验进化研究是剖析进化反应的有力工具。