What is needed for next-generation ecological and evolutionary genomics?

Abstract

Ecological and evolutionary genomics (EEG) aims to link gene functions and genomic features to phenotypes and ecological factors. Although the rapid development of technologies allows central questions to be addressed at an unprecedented level of molecular detail, they do not alleviate one of the major challenges of EEG, which is that a large fraction of genes remains without any annotation. Here, we propose two solutions to this challenge. The first solution is in the form of a database that regroups associations between genes, organismal attributes and abiotic and biotic conditions. This database would result in an ecological annotation of genes by allowing cross-referencing across studies and taxa. Our second solution is to use new functional techniques to characterize genes implicated in the response to ecological challenges.