Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 4, 2026

Generation of Genome-wide Chromatin Conformation Capture Libraries from Tightly Staged Early Drosophila Embryos
Published on: October 3, 2018
Accelerated sequence divergence of conserved genomic elements in Drosophila melanogaster
Alisha K Holloway1, David J Begun, Adam Siepel
1Department of Evolution and Ecology and Center for Population Biology, University of California, Davis, California 95691, USA. akholloway@ucdavis.edu
Abstract:
Recent genomic sequencing of 10 additional Drosophila genomes provides a rich resource for comparative genomics analyses aimed at understanding the similarities and differences between species and between Drosophila and mammals. Using a phylogenetic approach, we identified 64 genomic elements that have been highly conserved over most of the Drosophila tree, but that have experienced a recent burst of evolution along the Drosophila melanogaster lineage. Compared to similarly defined elements in humans, these regions of rapid lineage-specific evolution in Drosophila differ dramatically in location, mechanism of evolution, and functional properties of associated genes. Notably, the majority reside in protein-coding regions and primarily result from rapid adaptive synonymous site evolution. In fact, adaptive evolution appears to be driving substitutions to unpreferred codons. Our analysis also highlights interesting noncoding genomic regions, such as regulatory regions in the gene gooseberry-neuro and a putative novel miRNA.
Related Concept Videos
Multi-species Conserved Sequences
Although the genome of each species varies greatly from each other, a few sequences are highly conserved. Such conserved DNA...
Exon Recombination
Exon shuffling follows “splice frame rules.” Each exon has three reading...
Cis-regulatory Sequences
Gene Evolution - Fast or Slow?
In contrast, regions which code...
Position-effect Variegation
Synteny and Evolution
Around 80 million years ago, the human and mice lineages diverged from the common ancestor. During the course of evolution, the ancestral chromosome underwent...

