RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Extensive intraspecies cryptic variation in an ancient embryonic gene regulatory network
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 628495
DO 10.1101/628495
A1 Yamila N. Torres Cleuren
A1 Chee Kiang Ewe
A1 Kyle C. Chipman
A1 Emily Mears
A1 Cricket G. Wood
A1 Coco A.E. Al-Alami
A1 Melissa R. Alcorn
A1 Thomas L. Turner
A1 Pradeep M. Joshi
A1 Russell G. Snell
A1 Joel H. Rothman
YR 2019
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/07/31/628495.abstract
AB Innovations in metazoan development arise from evolutionary modification of gene regulatory networks (GRNs). We report widespread cryptic variation in the requirement for two key regulatory inputs, SKN-1/Nrf2 and MOM-2/Wnt, into the C. elegans endoderm GRN. While some natural variants show a nearly absolute requirement for these two regulators, in others, most embryos differentiate endoderm in their absence. GWAS and analysis of recombinant inbred lines reveal multiple genetic regions underlying this broad phenotypic variation. We observe a reciprocal trend, in which genomic variants, or knockdown of endoderm regulatory genes, that result in a high SKN-1 requirement often show low MOM-2/Wnt requirement and vice-versa, suggesting that cryptic variation in the endoderm GRN may be tuned by opposing requirements for these two key regulatory inputs. These findings reveal that while the downstream components in the endoderm GRN are common across metazoan phylogeny, initiating regulatory inputs are remarkably plastic even within a single species.