Modularity Facilitates Flexible Tuning of Plastic and Evolutionary Gene Expression Responses during Early Divergence

Gene expression changes have been recognized as important drivers of adaptation to changing environmental conditions. Little is known about the relative roles of plastic and evolutionary responses in complex gene expression networks during the early stages of divergence. Large gene expression data sets coupled with in silico methods for identifying co-expressed modules now enable systems genetics approaches also in non-model species for better understanding of gene expression responses during early divergence. Here, we combined gene co-expression analyses with population genetics to separate plastic and population (evolutionary) effects in expression networks using small salmonid populations as a model system. We show that plastic and population effects were highly variable among the six identified modules and that the plastic effects explained larger proportion of the total eigengene expression than population effects. A more detailed analysis of the population effects using a QST - FST comparison across 16622 annotated transcripts revealed that gene expression followed neutral expectations within modules and at the global level. Furthermore, two modules showed enrichment for genes coding for early developmental traits that have been previously identified as important phenotypic traits in thermal responses in the same model system indicating that co-expression analysis can capture expression patterns underlying ecologically important traits. We suggest that module-specific responses may facilitate the flexible tuning of expression levels to local thermal conditions. Overall, our study indicates that plasticity and neutral evolution are the main drivers of gene expression variance in the early stages of thermal adaptation in this system.