Evolutionary innovation in conserved regulatory elements across the mammalian tree of life.

ABSTRACT: Transcriptional enhancers orchestrate cell type- and time point-specific gene expression programs. Evolution of enhancer sequences can alter target gene expression without causing detrimental misexpression in other contexts. It has long been thought that this modularity allows evolutionary changes in enhancers to escape pleiotropic constraints, which is especially important for evolutionary constrained developmental patterning genes. However, there is still little data supporting this hypothesis. Here we identified signatures of accelerated evolution in conserved enhancer elements across the mammalian phylogeny. We found that pleiotropic genes involved in gene regulatory and developmental processes were enriched for accelerated sequence evolution within their enhancer elements. These genes

SUBMITTER: Uebbing S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10862883 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature