「Introduction to Ecological GeneticsBook review
Authored by Jun Kitano, Maruzen Publishing, January 2024, 3,200 yen (excluding tax)
With the advent of next-generation sequencers, it has become easy to acquire large amounts of wildlife genome data, leading to a dramatic advancement in population genetics. Progress in genome analysis methods is relentless, and chromosome-level whole-genome analysis using chromosome conformation capture (Hi-C) is now being performed in many organisms. Furthermore, while the genomes of diploid organisms have traditionally been determined as a single pseudo-genome sequence stitched together in a mosaic fashion, ignoring differences between homologous chromosomes, it is now becoming possible to distinguish genome sequences derived from both parents and determine each connected sequence on a chromosome scale. Even nowadays, when such quantitatively and qualitatively enriched genomic information has become available, the source of biology remains the curiosity and "question" that arises in one's mind when observing living things. However, how to connect this "question" to an "I get it!" is what beginners want to know. This book provides the answer to what they want to know.
To answer questions from such students and researchers, this book aims to be an introductory text that explains the key points of ecological genetics as simply as possible. Using many clear and well-crafted diagrams, it starts from the basics of population genetics and kindly answers questions that graduate students actually starting their own research would want to know, such as "How many individuals and markers should be used for QTL mapping and GWS?" In addition, by providing specific examples of three-spined sticklebacks from the author's own research, readers can witness firsthand how the theories in this book are put into practice.
This book was created based on the contents of lectures held in 2020 and 2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the notes mention that questions and comments from the students were extremely helpful in its writing. It would be wonderful to be able to study using this book as a textbook as needed after attending such lectures. While lectures from institutions like MIT are available on the web, making the lectures that served as the basis for this book available online as well would surely be extremely beneficial for students aspiring to enter this field in the future, as well as for researchers looking to expand their targets from molecular biology in the laboratory to animals in the field. As for the reviewer personally, in jellyfish (cnidarians), which are the subject of my research, sex is determined genetically, but the sex chromosomes (or more precisely, the sex-determining genes) are still unknown; therefore, the final chapter (Chapter 9), "Genetic Mechanisms of Sex Chromosome Evolution," was an extremely engaging read.
It is expected that this book will find many readers interested in ecological genetics and contribute to the development of this field.
Reviewer: Kazunori Tachibana, School of Life Science and Technology, Tokyo Institute of Technology
