Abstract

The role of gene expression in evolutionary adaptation has been a subject of debate for over 40 years.cis‐regulation of transcription has been proposed to be the primary source of morphological novelty in evolution, though this is based on only a handful of examples. Recently the first genome‐wide studies of gene expression adaptation have been published, giving us an initial global view of this process. Systematic studies such as these will allow a number of key questions currently facing the field of gene expression evolution to be addressed.