Abstract
It is generally accepted that gene regulation serves an important role in determining the phenotype. To shed light on the evolutionary forces operating on gene regulation, previous studies mainly focused on the expression differences between species and their inter-specific hybrids. Here, we use RNA-Seq to study the intra-specific distribution of cis- and trans-regulatory variation in Drosophila pseudoobscura. Consistent with previous results, we find almost twice as many genes (26%) with significant trans-effects than genes with significant cis-effects (18%). While this result supports the previous suggestion of a larger mutational target of trans-effects, we also show that trans-effects may be subjected to purifying selection. Our results underline the importance of intra-specific analyses for the understanding of the evolution of gene expression.
Highlights
It is well understood that variation in gene expression is an important source of phenotypic differences
The genetic basis of variation in gene expression can be divided into two classes: 1) Variation in regulatory domains that modulates gene expression or polymorphisms that influence the stability of mRNA. 2) Variation in transacting proteins, e.g. transcription factors that regulate the expression of a set of target genes
We detected significant (FDR#0.05) differences in gene expression due to cis-effects between the two parental alleles for 1359 genes, which correspond to 18% of the expressed genes
Summary
It is well understood that variation in gene expression is an important source of phenotypic differences. It has been a long-term goal in biology to understand the regulation of gene expression. 2) Variation in transacting proteins, e.g. transcription factors that regulate the expression of a set of target genes. The combined effects of cisand trans-regulation determine the expression of every gene. Since offspring share the trans-acting factors from both parents the contrast of gene expression in parents and offspring provides an estimate for the magnitude of cis- and transeffects [3]
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