Butterfly eyespots evolved via co-option of the antennal gene-regulatory network
Murugesan, S. N.; Connahs, H.; Matsuoka, Y.; Gupta, M. d.; Huq, M.; Gowri, V.; Monroe, S.; Deem, K. D.; Werner, T.; Tomoyasu, Y.; Monteiro, A.
Show abstract
Butterfly eyespots are beautiful novel traits with an unknown developmental origin. Here we show that eyespots likely originated via co-option of the antennal gene-regulatory network (GRN) to novel locations on the wing. Using comparative transcriptome analysis, we show that eyespots cluster with antennae relative to multiple other tissues. Furthermore, three genes essential for eyespot development (Distal-less (Dll), spalt (sal), and Antennapedia (Antp)) share similar regulatory connections as those observed in the antennal GRN. CRISPR knockout of cis-regulatory elements (CREs) for Dll and sal led to the loss of eyespots and antennae, and also legs and wings, demonstrating that these CREs are highly pleiotropic. We conclude that eyespots likely re-used the ancient antennal GRN, a network previously implicated also in the development of legs and wings.
Matching journals
The top 3 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.
Similar papers in this journal
Similar papers in this journal
"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.