Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, Missouri, USA.
Nat Genet. 2011 May;43(5):414-20. doi: 10.1038/ng.808. Epub 2011 Apr 10.
The binding of some transcription factors has been shown to diverge substantially between closely related species. Here we show that the binding of the developmental transcription factor Twist is highly conserved across six Drosophila species, revealing strong functional constraints at its enhancers. Conserved binding correlates with sequence motifs for Twist and its partners, permitting the de novo discovery of their combinatorial binding. It also includes over 10,000 low-occupancy sites near the detection limit, which tend to mark enhancers of later developmental stages. These results suggest that developmental enhancers can be highly evolutionarily constrained, presumably because of their complex combinatorial nature.
一些转录因子的结合在亲缘关系密切的物种之间已经显示出很大的差异。在这里，我们表明发育转录因子 Twist 的结合在六个果蝇物种中高度保守，揭示了其增强子上强烈的功能约束。保守的结合与 Twist 及其伙伴的序列基序相关，允许它们的组合结合的从头发现。它还包括 10000 多个接近检测极限的低占有率位点，这些位点往往标记着后期发育阶段的增强子。这些结果表明，发育增强子可能受到高度的进化限制，大概是因为它们复杂的组合性质。
