Yeshoda Harry-Paul publishes her first, first-authored paper

UTM Biology congratulates PhD student Yeshoda Harry-Paul on the publication of her first first-authored research paper, “The Evolution of Gene Expression Plasticity During Adaptation to Salt in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii,” in the journal Genome Biology & Evolution.

Yeshoda’s research investigates how phenotypic plasticity contributes to evolutionary adaptation in the freshwater alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii when exposed to high-salt environments. Phenotypic plasticity—the ability of an organism to alter its traits in response to environmental change—can help populations persist under stressful conditions, but the genetic mechanisms underlying this process remain poorly understood.

To explore these mechanisms, Harry-Paul examined algal populations evolved under high-salt conditions over 500 generations. The study revealed strong evidence for genetic compensation, in which many genes returned to ancestral expression levels rather than maintaining salt-induced expression patterns. High-salt–adapted lines showed increased expression of genes associated with energy production and salt resistance, while ancestral strains emphasized DNA repair processes.

Notably, independently evolved high-salt lines developed similar plastic responses, suggesting convergent evolutionary solutions to salt stress. Although high-salt lines exhibited a greater number of cis-regulatory changes, most gene expression patterns did not directly reflect inherited sequence changes, indicating that long-term adaptation requires deeper regulatory evolution beyond short-term plastic responses.

Overall, the study highlights the role of phenotypic plasticity as a temporary buffer against environmental stress, while emphasizing that sustained adaptation depends on more stable genetic and regulatory changes.

UTM Biology congratulates Yeshoda Harry-Paul on this important achievement and wishes her continued success in her research.

Read the pull paper, here.