Patterns of enrichment and acceleration in evolutionary rates of promoters suggest a role of regulatory regions in cetacean gigantism.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Cetaceans (whales, porpoises, and dolphins) are a lineage of aquatic mammals from which some species became giants. Only recently, gigantism has been investigated from the molecular point of view. Studies focused mainly on coding regions, and no data on the influence of regulatory regions on gigantism in this group was available. Accordingly, we investigated the molecular evolution of non-coding regulatory regions of genes already described in the literature for association with size in mammals, focusing mainly on the promoter regions. For this, we used Ciiider and phyloP tools. Ciiider identifies significantly enriched transcription factor binding sites, and phyloP estimates the molecular evolution rate of the promoter.

Results

We found evidence of enrichment of

SUBMITTER: Silva FA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10594719 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature