A natural plant transgene is associated with local habitat variation

What is it about?

There are few well-supported examples of the horizontal transfer of functional nuclear genes between flowering plants and, so far, no studies have demonstrated associations between the within-individual presence of naturally acquired transgenes, their expressed products and habitat variation within populations of plants or, to our knowledge, animals. We show, in the grass Festuca ovina, that the distribution of individuals carrying a fully functional natural transgene coding for the enzyme cytosolic phosphoglucose isomerase (PgiC) is significantly related to fine-scale habitat variation. Our results suggest that the transgene contributes, together with the unlinked “native” PgiC locus, to local adaptation within grassland microhabitats.

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