The BEAF-32 insulator coordinates genome organization and function during the evolution of Drosophila species
Abstract
Understanding the relationship between genome organization and expression is central to understanding genome function. Closely apposed genes in a head-to-head orientation share the same upstream region and are likely to be coregulated. Here we identify the Drosophila BEAF-32 insulator as a cis regulatory element separating close head-to-head genes with different transcription regulation modes. We then compare the binding landscapes of the BEAF-32 insulator protein in four different Drosophila genomes and highlight the evolutionarily conserved presence of this protein between close adjacent genes. We find that changes in binding of BEAF-32 to sites in the genome of different Drosophila species correlate with alterations in genome organization caused by DNA rearrangements or genome size expansion. The cross-talk between BEAF-32 genomic distribution and genome organization contributes to new gene-expression profiles, which in turn translate into specific and distinct phenotypes. The results suggest a mechanism for the establishment of differences in transcription patterns during evolution.
Footnotes
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↵1 Corresponding author
E-mail vcorces{at}emory.edu
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[Supplemental material is available for this article.]
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Article published online before print. Article, supplemental material, and publication date are at http://www.genome.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gr.142125.112.
- Received April 21, 2012.
- Accepted August 14, 2012.
This article is distributed exclusively by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press for the first six months after the full-issue publication date (see http://genome.cshlp.org/site/misc/terms.xhtml). After six months, it is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License), as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/.
