Abstract
Burga et al. could not identify gene regulatory regions which might contribute to flightlessness in the Galapagos cormorant. Using a bird-specific alignment we discover 48 limb enhancers showing strong accelerated evolution in P. harrisi, including enhancers of key cilia development, hedgehog signaling, and planar cell polarity genes, such as Prickle1, Twist2 and Ndk1, extending Burga's proposed mechanism into the non-coding genome.
Copyright
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-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
Posted September 08, 2017.
Comment on “A genetic signature of the evolution of loss of flight in the Galapagos cormorant”
