Abai, MR

6th International Congress of DipterologyEvolution of cis-regulatory Sequences in acalyptrateCyclorrhapha: sequencing and analysis of 300developmental loci in Sepsidae, Tephritidae and Diopsidae.Hare, E.E. (1), B.K. Peterson (1), V.N. Iyer (1), R. Meier (3), L. Carsten (4), D.R. Papaj(4), R.S. Kurashima (5), E. Jang (5), J-F. Cheng (2, 6), B.M. Wiegmann (7), M.B. Eisen(1,2)(1) Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA(2) Genome Sciences Department, Genomics Division, Lawrence Berkeley NationalLaboratory, Berkeley, CA(3) Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore(4) Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ(5) Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center, UDSA Agricultural Research Service,Honolulu, HI(6) DOE Joint Genome Institute, US Department of Energy, Walnut Creek, CA(7) Department of Entomology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NCAlthough it is widely believed that changes in developmental geneexpression play a role in the evolution of organismal form and function,the molecular basis is poorly understood. Developmental gene expressionis precisely regulated by networks of regulatory proteins that interact withcis-DNA sequences associated with every gene. We are studying howthese cis-regulatory sequences change over different evolutionary timescales, how these changes affect regulatory output, and how regulatorychanges contribute to morphological and developmental diversification.Evolutionary analyses in Drosophila suggest that developmental enhancersare highly plastic, and that functional constraints on enhancer sequencesmanifest in the composition and architecture of transcription factor bindingsites rather than in the linear sequence of the region. However, there isinsufficient sequence and functional divergence among the sequencedDrosophila species to fully characterize the dynamics of enhancerevolution, while extensive functional divergence between drosophilids andmosquitoes (the closest outgroup with sequenced genomes) makescomparisons of these taxa difficult to interpret. To overcome theselimitations, we have sequenced (in collaboration with the Joint GenomeInstitute) fosmids containing 18 developmentally important loci in 1696