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Related Experiment Videos

Evidence for stabilizing selection in a eukaryotic enhancer element.

M Z Ludwig1, C Bergman, N H Patel

  • 1Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA. mludwig@midway.uchicago.edu

Nature
|February 17, 2000
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

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Evolutionary changes in gene regulatory elements like enhancers can have functional consequences. This study shows that sequence differences in Drosophila enhancers are masked by co-evolved changes, impacting gene expression patterns.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental biology
  • Evolutionary genetics
  • Molecular biology

Background:

  • Eukaryotic gene expression relies on cis-regulatory modules (enhancers) bound by transcription factors.
  • The even-skipped stripe 2 element in Drosophila melanogaster is a well-studied enhancer controlling specific gene expression patterns.
  • Despite conserved expression, enhancer sequences evolve, presenting an evolutionary paradox.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the functional impact of sequence divergence within the even-skipped stripe 2 enhancer.
  • To understand how evolutionary changes in enhancers affect gene regulation.
  • To propose a model for the evolution of eukaryotic regulatory sequences.

Main Methods:

  • Construction of chimeric enhancers by swapping halves of native stripe 2 elements from different species.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Assessing reporter gene expression driven by these chimeric enhancers in Drosophila embryos.
  • Comparative sequence analysis of enhancer elements across species.

    • Main Results:

    • Chimeric enhancers, formed by combining halves from different species, failed to drive reporter gene expression in the wild-type pattern.
    • Sequence differences between species' enhancers have functional consequences on gene expression.
    • These functional consequences appear masked by other co-evolved sequence modifications.

    Conclusions:

    • Evolutionary changes in enhancer sequences do have functional impacts on gene regulation.
    • Co-evolutionary processes can mask the functional effects of individual sequence variations.
    • A model for the evolution of eukaryotic regulatory sequences is proposed based on these findings.