Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA.
Science. 2011 Aug 26;333(6046):1137-41. doi: 10.1126/science.1208227. Epub 2011 Jul 21.
Mimicry--whereby warning signals in different species evolve to look similar--has long served as a paradigm of convergent evolution. Little is known, however, about the genes that underlie the evolution of mimetic phenotypes or to what extent the same or different genes drive such convergence. Here, we characterize one of the major genes responsible for mimetic wing pattern evolution in Heliconius butterflies. Mapping, gene expression, and population genetic work all identify a single gene, optix, that controls extreme red wing pattern variation across multiple species of Heliconius. Our results show that the cis-regulatory evolution of a single transcription factor can repeatedly drive the convergent evolution of complex color patterns in distantly related species, thus blurring the distinction between convergence and homology.
拟态——不同物种的警告信号进化得相似——长期以来一直是趋同进化的范例。然而，对于控制拟态表型进化的基因知之甚少，也不知道相同或不同的基因在多大程度上驱动这种趋同。在这里，我们描述了一个主要基因在 Heliconius 蝴蝶翅膀图案进化中的作用。通过作图、基因表达和群体遗传学研究，都鉴定出一个单一的基因 optix，它控制着 Heliconius 多种物种翅膀上极端红色图案的变化。我们的结果表明，单个转录因子的顺式调控进化可以反复驱动远缘物种复杂颜色图案的趋同进化，从而模糊了趋同和同源之间的区别。
