Molin L, Mounsey A, Aslam S, Bauer P, Young J, James M, Sharma-Oates A, Hope I A
School of Biology, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK.
Development. 2000 Nov;127(22):4825-35. doi: 10.1242/dev.127.22.4825.
The Caenorhabditis elegans gene pes-1 encodes a transcription factor of the forkhead family and is expressed in specific cells of the early embryo. Despite these observations suggesting pes-1 to have an important regulatory role in embryogenesis, inactivation of pes-1 caused no apparent phenotype. This lack of phenotype is a consequence of genetic redundancy. Whereas a weak, transitory effect was observed upon disruption of just T14G12.4 (renamed fkh-2) gene function, simultaneous disruption of the activity of both fkh-2 and pes-1 resulted in a penetrant lethal phenotype. Sequence comparison suggests these two forkhead genes are not closely related and the functional association of fkh-2 and pes-1 was only explored because of the similarity of their expression patterns. Conservation of the fkh-2/pes-1 genetic redundancy between C. elegans and the related species C. briggsae was demonstrated. Interestingly the redundancy in C. briggsae is not as complete as in C. elegans and this could be explained by alterations of pes-1 specific to the C. briggsae ancestry. With overlapping function retained on an evolutionary time-scale, genetic redundancy may be extensive and expression pattern data could, as here, have a crucial role in characterization of developmental processes.
秀丽隐杆线虫基因pes-1编码一种叉头家族转录因子，在早期胚胎的特定细胞中表达。尽管这些观察结果表明pes-1在胚胎发生中具有重要调节作用，但pes-1失活并未导致明显的表型。这种表型缺失是基因冗余的结果。虽然仅破坏T14G12.4（重新命名为fkh-2）基因功能时观察到微弱的、短暂的效应，但同时破坏fkh-2和pes-1的活性会导致显性致死表型。序列比较表明这两个叉头基因没有密切关系，fkh-2和pes-1的功能关联只是由于它们表达模式的相似性才被探索。秀丽隐杆线虫与相关物种嗜热栖热放线菌之间fkh-2/pes-1基因冗余的保守性得到了证实。有趣的是，嗜热栖热放线菌中的冗余不像秀丽隐杆线虫中那样完全，这可以用嗜热栖热放线菌谱系特有的pes-1改变来解释。在进化时间尺度上保留了重叠功能，基因冗余可能很广泛，表达模式数据可能像这里一样，在发育过程的表征中起关键作用。
