MBE Advance Access originally published online on May 30, 2003
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Mol. Biol. Evol. 20(9):1377-1419. 2003
DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msg140
© 2003 by the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. ISSN: 0737-4038
Review Article |
The Evolution of Transcriptional Regulation in Eukaryotes
Department of Biology, Duke University
E-mail: gwray{at}duke.edu.
Gene expression is central to the genotype-phenotype relationship in all organisms, and it is an important component of the genetic basis for evolutionary change in diverse aspects of phenotype. However, the evolution of transcriptional regulation remains understudied and poorly understood. Here we review the evolutionary dynamics of promoter, or cis-regulatory, sequences and the evolutionary mechanisms that shape them. Existing evidence indicates that populations harbor extensive genetic variation in promoter sequences, that a substantial fraction of this variation has consequences for both biochemical and organismal phenotype, and that some of this functional variation is sorted by selection. As with protein-coding sequences, rates and patterns of promoter sequence evolution differ considerably among loci and among clades for reasons that are not well understood. Studying the evolution of transcriptional regulation poses empirical and conceptual challenges beyond those typically encountered in analyses of coding sequence evolution: promoter organization is much less regular than that of coding sequences, and sequences required for the transcription of each locus reside at multiple other loci in the genome. Because of the strong context-dependence of transcriptional regulation, sequence inspection alone provides limited information about promoter function. Understanding the functional consequences of sequence differences among promoters generally requires biochemical and in vivo functional assays. Despite these challenges, important insights have already been gained into the evolution of transcriptional regulation, and the pace of discovery is accelerating.
Key Words: binding site • enhancer • evolution of development • genotype-phenotype relationship • promoter • transcription factor
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