Why some offspring are inferior to their parents?

Understanding poor performance of offspring in comparison to their parents, known as hybrid incompatibility, gives knowledge of the first steps towards reproductive isolation and speciation. Using modern methods of genomic research, we studied three new hybrid incompatibility cases in Arabidopsis thaliana. Our results have highlighted that in addition to rapidly evolving genes, genes involved in conserved processes may underlie hybrid incompatibilities. In future, we will study how the different hybrid incompatibility genes function and what role they have in local adaptation and evolution.