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The regulator-executor-phenotype architecture shaped by natural selection

Han Chen, Chung-I Wu, Xionglei He
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/026443
Han Chen
1The State Key Laboratory of Bio-control, College of Ecology and Evolution, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China
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Chung-I Wu
1The State Key Laboratory of Bio-control, College of Ecology and Evolution, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China
2Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
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Xionglei He
1The State Key Laboratory of Bio-control, College of Ecology and Evolution, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China
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Abstract

The genotype-phenotype relationships are a central focus of modern genetics. While deletion analyses have uncovered many regulatory genes of specific traits, it remains largely unknown how these regulators execute their commands through downstream genes, or executors. Here, we wish to know the number of executors for each trait, their relationships with the regulators and the role natural selection may play in shaping the regulator-executor-phenotype architecture. By analyzing ∼500 morphological traits of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae we found that a trait is often controlled directly by a large number of executors, the expressions of which are affected by regulators. By recruiting a set of “coordinating” regulators, natural selection helps organize the large number of executors into a small number of co-expression modules. This way, the individual executors can be readily recognized by observational approaches that examine the statistical association between gene activity and trait. When the trait is subject to little or no selection, however, the executors are controlled only by “non-coordinating” regulators that evolve passively and do not build the executors’ co-expression. As a result, none of the executors remain a statistically tractable relationship with the trait. Thus, natural selection by governing some traits strongly (such as fertility) and others weakly (such as aging-related phenotypes) profoundly influences the genotype-phenotype relationships as well as their tractability.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted March 03, 2016.
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The regulator-executor-phenotype architecture shaped by natural selection
Han Chen, Chung-I Wu, Xionglei He
bioRxiv 026443; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/026443
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The regulator-executor-phenotype architecture shaped by natural selection
Han Chen, Chung-I Wu, Xionglei He
bioRxiv 026443; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/026443

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