Metal hyperaccumulation and hypertolerance: a model for plant evolutionary genomics

In the course of evolution, plants adapted to major variations in metal availability in soils and therefore represent an important source of natural diversity of metal homeostasis networks. Thus, research on plant metal homeostasis can provide insights into the functioning, regulation and adaptations of biological networks. Here, we describe major breakthroughs in our understanding of the genetic and molecular basis of metal hyperaccumulation and associated hypertolerance, a naturally selected complex trait which represents an extreme adaptation of the metal homeostasis network. Investigations in this field reveal further the molecular alterations underlying the evolution of natural phenotypic diversity and provide a highly relevant framework for comparative genomics