Mangroves and multiplications: Influence of genome duplications on salt tolerance

Whole-genome duplication (WGD) is an important force in plant diversification and novel environment adaptation. Various hypotheses have been proposed on the mechanism of how WGD influences this evolutionary process from chromosome recombination to genetic diversity (Qi et al., 2021). In this issue of Molecular Ecology, Xu et al. (2022) conduct a comparative transcriptome study across species to investigate the effects of WGD on plant adaptation and the differentiation of paralogues within two distantly related mangrove species (Xu et al., 2021). They identify retained WGD-derived duplicate pairs, assess their contributions to the salt tolerance phenotype, and propose a model for adaptation expansion in mangroves through the neofunctionalization of WGD-derived duplicate genes. Their results show that neofunctionalized copies of known salt tolerance-related genes show upregulated expression in fluctuating salinity (i.e., fresh and hypersaline) compared to the optimal medium salinity environment. This suggests that after WGD, retained duplicates increase genomic plasticity allowing for adaptation to new and unstable environments.