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Evidence for compensatory evolution within pleiotropic regulatory elements

delete2024-09-10
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OA
AI
Z
Zane Kliesmete
P
Peter Orchard
V
Victor Yan Kin Lee
J
Johanna Geuder
S
Simon M. Krauß
M
Mari Ohnuki
J
Jessica Jocher
B
Beate Vieth
W
Wolfgang Enard
I
Ines Hellmann *
DOI:10.1101/gr.279001.124delete
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Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
Pleiotropy, measured as expression breadth across tissues, is one of the best predictors for protein sequence and expression conservation. In this study, we investigated its effect on the evolution of cis-regulatory elements (CREs). To this end, we carefully reanalyzed the Epigenomics Roadmap data for nine fetal tissues, assigning a measure of pleiotropic degree to nearly half a million CREs. To assess the functional conservation of CREs, we generated ATAC-seq and RNA-seq data from humans and macaques. We found that more pleiotropic CREs exhibit greater conservation in accessibility, and the mRNA expression levels of the associated genes are more conserved. This trend of higher conservation for higher degrees of pleiotropy persists when analyzing the transcription factor binding repertoire. In contrast, simple DNA sequence conservation of orthologous sites between species tends to be even lower for pleiotropic CREs than for species-specific CREs. Combining various lines of evidence, we propose that the lack of sequence conservation in functionally conserved pleiotropic CREs is owing to within-element compensatory evolution. In summary, our findings suggest that pleiotropy is also a good predictor for the functional conservation of CREs, even though this is not reflected in the sequence conservation of pleiotropic CREs.
Keywords:
TRANSCRIPTION FACTOR-BINDING
ENHANCERS
EXPRESSION
PROTEIN
GENES
DIFFERENTIATION
CONSERVATION
SELECTION
LANDSCAPES
CHROMATIN

Journal

Genome Research cover
Genome Research
IF:
5.5
Papers:
5.6K
Citations:
4.3W

Organization

U
University of Munich
Scholars:
5.7W
Papers: 4.2W
Citations: 68