Marine populations of the threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) have repeatedly colonized and rapidly adapted to freshwater habitats, providing a powerful system to map the genetic architecture of evolved traits. Here, we developed and applied a binned genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) method to build dense genome-wide linkage maps of sticklebacks using two large marine by freshwater F2 crosses of more than 350 fish each. The resulting linkage maps significantly improve the genome assembly by anchoring 78 new scaffolds to chromosomes, reorienting 40 scaffolds, and rearranging scaffolds in 4 locations. In the revised genome assembly, 94.6% of the assembly was anchored to a chromosome. To assess linkage map quality, we mapped quantitative trait loci (QTL) controlling lateral plate number, which mapped as expected to a 200-kb genomic region containing Ectodysplasin, as well as a chromosome 7 QTL overlapping a previously identified modifier QTL. Finally, we mapped eight QTL controlling convergently evolved reductions in gill raker length in the two crosses, which revealed that this classic adaptive trait has a surprisingly modular and nonparallel genetic basis.

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Spatial Molecular Imager (SMI) is an automated microscope imaging system with microfluidic reagent cycling, for high-plex, spatial in-situ detection of multiomic targets (RNA and protein) on FFPE and other intact samples with subcellular resolution. The key attributes of the CosMxTM SMI platform (NanoString®, Seattle, WA) include: 1) high-plex and high-sensitivity imaging chemistry that works for both RNA and protein detection, 2) three-dimensional subcellular-resolution image analysis with a target localization accuracy of ∼50 nm in the XY plane, 3) large Hamming-distance encoding scheme with low error rate (0.0092 false calls per cell per gene) and low background (∼ 0.04 counts per cell per gene), 4) high-throughput (up to 1 million cells per sample, four samples per run), 5) antibody-based cell segmentation methods, and 6) compatibility with formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) samples.In this study, 980 RNAs and 80 proteins were measured at subcellular resolution in FFPE cultured cell pellets, as well as FFPE tissues from biobanked samples of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and breast cancer. Cross-platform analysis using 16 cancer cell lines validated high-correlation (R2 ∼0.77) and high sensitivity (∼1.44 FPKM/TPM; roughly 1 to 2 copies of RNA per cell) when compared to RNA-seq. Real-world archived NSCLC FFPE tumor sections revealed greater than 94% cell detection efficiency for RNA, despite the low RNA quality QV200 20% to the medium quality 65%. The accuracy of protein expression measurements was independent of the level of multiplexing, as demonstrated by the linear behavior of nested multiplexing panels (R2 > 0.9). At 980-plex RNA detection, data analysis allowed identification of over 18 distinct cell types, at least 10 unique tumor microenvironment neighborhoods, and over 100 pairwise ligand-receptor interactions. Data from 8 NSCLC samples comprising over 800,000 single cells and ∼260 million transcripts are released into the public domain (www.nanostring.com) to allow for extended data analysis by the entire spatial biology research community.

The extent to which convergent adaptation to similar ecological niches occurs by a predictable genetic basis remains a fundamental question in biology. Threespine stickleback fish have undergone an adaptive radiation in which ancestral oceanic populations repeatedly colonized and adapted to freshwater habitats. In multiple lakes in British Columbia, two different freshwater species have evolved: a deep-bodied benthic form adapted to forage near the lake substrate, and a narrow-bodied limnetic form adapted to forage in open water. Here we use genome-wide linkage mapping in marine x benthic F2 genetic crosses to test the extent of shared genomic regions underlying benthic adaptation in three benthic populations. We identify at least 100 Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) harboring genes influencing skeletal morphology. The majority of QTL (57%) are unique to one cross. However, four genomic regions affecting eight craniofacial and armor phenotypes are found in all three benthic populations. We find that QTL are clustered in the genome and overlapping QTL regions are enriched for genomic signatures of natural selection. These findings suggest that benthic adaptation has occurred via both parallel and non-parallel genetic changes.