Coordinate enhancers share common organizational features in the Drosophila genome

Albert Erives, Michael Levine

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

103 Scopus citations

Abstract

The evolution of animal diversity depends on changes in the regulation of a relatively fixed set of protein-coding genes. To understand how these changes might arise, we examined the organization of shared sequence motifs in four coordinately regulated neurogenic enhancers that direct similar patterns of gene expression in the early Drosophila embryo. All four enhancers possess similar arrangements of a subset of putative regulatory elements. These shared features were used to identify a neurogenic enhancer in the distantly related Anopheles genome. We suggest that the constrained organization of metazoan enhancers may be essential for their ability to produce precise patterns of gene expression during development. Organized binding sites should facilitate the identification of regulatory codes that link primary DNA sequence information with predicted patterns of gene activity.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)3851-3856
Number of pages6
JournalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Volume101
Issue number11
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 16 2004
Externally publishedYes

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General

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