Evolved Bmp6 enhancer alleles drive spatial shifts in gene expression during tooth development in sticklebacks.

ABSTRACT: Mutations in enhancers have been shown to often underlie natural variation but the evolved differences in enhancer activity can be difficult to identify in vivo. Threespine sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus) are a robust system for studying enhancer evolution due to abundant natural genetic variation, a diversity of evolved phenotypes between ancestral marine and derived freshwater forms, and the tractability of transgenic techniques. Previous work identified a series of polymorphisms within an intronic enhancer of the Bone morphogenetic protein 6 (Bmp6) gene that are associated with evolved tooth gain, a derived increase in freshwater tooth number that arises late in development. Here, we use a bicistronic reporter construct containing a genetic insulator and a pair of reciprocal two-c

SUBMITTER: Stepaniak MD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8664583 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature