Drosophilaphilia #2: Silencing silencers to evolve new patterns.

Nice thoughtful overview on my collaborator’s new publication!

Genetic Changes to a Transcriptional Silencer Element Confers Phenotypic Diversity within and between Drosophila Species

Winslow C. Johnson , Alison J. Ordway , Masayoshi Watada, Jonathan N. Pruitt, Thomas M. Williams, Mark Rebeiz

Author Summary

One of the greatest challenges in understanding the relationship between genotype and phenotype is to discern how changes in DNA affect the normal functioning of genes. Mutations may generate a new function for a gene, yet it is frequently observed that they inactivate some aspect of a gene’s normal capacity. Investigations focused on understanding the developmental basis for the evolution of anatomical structures has found a prevalent role for mutations that alter developmental gene regulation. In animals, genes are transcriptionally activated in specific tissues during development by regulatory sequences distributed across their expansive non-protein coding regions. Regulatory elements known as silencers act to prevent genes from being expressed in certain tissues, providing a mechanism for precise control. Here, we show how a silencer that prevents expression of a pigment-producing enzyme in certain Drosophila species has repeatedly been subject to inactivating mutations that increased this gene’s expression. This example illustrates how such negative-acting regulatory sequences can represent a convenient target for increasing gene expression through the loss of a genetic element.

http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1005279

The Evolutionary Origination and Diversification of a Dimorphic Gene Regulatory Network through Parallel Innovations in cis andtrans

• Eric M. Camino,
• John C. Butts,
• Alison Ordway,
• Jordan E. Vellky,
• Mark Rebeiz,
• Thomas M. Williams

“Author Summary

The genomic content of regulatory genes such as transcription factors is surprisingly conserved between diverse animal species, raising the paradox of how new traits emerge, and are subsequently modified and lost. In this study we make a connection between the developmental basis for the formation of a fruit fly trait and the evolutionary basis for that trait’s origin, diversification, and loss. We show how the origin of a novel pigmentation trait is associated with the evolution of two regulatory sequences that control the co-expression of two key pigmentation genes. These sequences interact in unique ways with evolutionarily conserved Hox transcription factors to drive gene co-expression. Once these unique connections evolved, the alteration of this trait appears to have proceeded through changes to regulatory genes rather than regulatory sequences of the pigmentation genes. Thus, our findings support a scenario where regulatory sequence evolution provided new functions to old transcription factors, how co-expression can emerge from different utilizations of the same transcription factors, and that trait diversity was surprisingly shaped by changes in some manner to the deeply conserved regulatory genes.”

http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1005136

Tom Williams will tell the the Pub Science community about “Beyond the Birds and the Bees: Molecular Insights About the Making and Evolution of Fruit Fly Sexually Dimorphic Traits” on Tuesday September 9th. The presentation will begin at 7 PM and will take place at Blind Bob’s, which is located in Dayton’s Oregon District.

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