PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Sibylle Chantal Vonesch
AU  - David Lamparter
AU  - Trudy FC Mackay
AU  - Sven Bergmann
AU  - Ernst Hafen
TI  - Genome-wide analysis reveals novel regulators of growth in <em>Drosophila melanogaster</em>
AID  - 10.1101/017855
DP  - 2015 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 017855
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/04/10/017855.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/04/10/017855.full
AB  - Organismal size depends on the interplay between genetic and environmental factors. Genome-wide association (GWA) analyses in humans have implied many genes in the control of height but suffer from the inability of controlling the environment. Genetic analyses in Drosophila have identified conserved signaling pathways controlling size; however, how these pathways control phenotypic diversity is unclear. We performed GWA of size traits using the Drosophila Genetic Reference Panel of inbred, sequenced lines and find that top variants are predominantly sex-specific; do not map to canonical growth pathway genes, but can be linked to these by epistasis analysis; and are enriched in homologs of genes involved in human height regulation. Performing GWA on well-studied developmental traits under controlled conditions expands our understanding of developmental processes underlying phenotypic diversity.