Study of Enhancers in Drosophila and Themira
Author Information
Author(s): Justin Crocker, Albert Erives
Primary Institution: Department of Biological Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, United States of America
Hypothesis
Can complex animal regulatory sequences tolerate nearly complete rearrangement of their transcription factor binding sites?
Conclusion
The study concludes that the enhancers are not scrambled and that their functional organization is important.
Supporting Evidence
- The study shows extensive blocks of alignment between the enhancer sequences of Drosophila and Themira.
- The enhancers maintain a conserved order of binding sites despite sequence divergence.
- The findings challenge the notion that lack of sequence conservation implies a lack of functional organization.
Takeaway
The study looks at how certain DNA sequences that help control genes can change over time, but still keep their important functions.
Methodology
The study used two-dimensional sequence alignment plots to compare enhancer sequences from Drosophila and Themira.
Limitations
The study does not critically test the claim that enhancer organization is not important.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
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