Landry Christian R, Lemos Bernardo, Rifkin Scott A, Dickinson W J, Hartl Daniel L
Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 16 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Science. 2007 Jul 6;317(5834):118-21. doi: 10.1126/science.1140247. Epub 2007 May 24.
Identifying the properties of gene networks that influence their evolution is a fundamental research goal. However, modes of evolution cannot be inferred solely from the distribution of natural variation, because selection interacts with demography and mutation rates to shape polymorphism and divergence. We estimated the effects of naturally occurring mutations on gene expression while minimizing the effect of natural selection. We demonstrate that sensitivity of gene expression to mutations increases with both increasing trans-mutational target size and the presence of a TATA box. Genes with greater sensitivity to mutations are also more sensitive to systematic environmental perturbations and stochastic noise. These results provide a mechanistic basis for gene expression evolvability that can serve as a foundation for realistic models of regulatory evolution.
确定影响基因网络进化的特性是一个基本的研究目标。然而，进化模式不能仅仅从自然变异的分布中推断出来，因为选择与种群统计学和突变率相互作用，从而塑造多态性和分化。我们在尽量减少自然选择影响的同时，估计了自然发生的突变对基因表达的影响。我们证明，基因表达对突变的敏感性随着转突变靶标大小的增加和TATA框的存在而增加。对突变更敏感的基因对系统性环境扰动和随机噪声也更敏感。这些结果为基因表达的进化能力提供了一个机制基础，可作为调控进化现实模型的基础。
