Centre for Functional Genomics, Department of Biological and Medical Sciences, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford OX3 0BP, United Kingdom.
Department of Genetics and Developmental Biology, The Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and Research Institute, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 3109601, Israel.
Curr Opin Genet Dev. 2021 Aug;69:21-27. doi: 10.1016/j.gde.2021.01.003. Epub 2021 Jan 30.
The cuticle of insects is decorated with non-sensory hairs called trichomes. A few Drosophila species independently lost most of the dorso-lateral trichomes on first instar larvae. Genetic experiments revealed that this naked cuticle phenotype was caused by the evolution of enhancer function at the ovo/shavenbaby (ovo/svb) locus. Here we explore how this discovery catalyzed major new insights into morphological evolution in different developmental contexts, enhancer pleiotropy in gene regulation and the functionality and evolution of the Svb gene regulatory network (GRN). Taken together this highlights the importance of understanding the architecture and evolution of gene regulatory networks in detail and the great potential for further study of the Svb GRN.
昆虫的表皮上装饰着非感觉性的毛发，称为刚毛。少数果蝇物种独立地在第一龄幼虫上失去了大部分背-侧刚毛。遗传实验表明，这种裸露的表皮表型是由ovo/shavenbaby（ovo/svb）基因座上增强子功能的进化引起的。在这里，我们探讨了这一发现如何在不同的发育环境中促进对形态进化的新见解，包括增强子多效性在基因调控中的作用，以及 Svb 基因调控网络（GRN）的功能和进化。总的来说，这凸显了详细了解基因调控网络的结构和进化的重要性，以及进一步研究 Svb GRN 的巨大潜力。
