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Butterfly eyespots evolved via cooption of an ancestral gene-regulatory network that also patterns antennae, legs, and wings.

Suriya Narayanan MurugesanHeidi ConnahsYuji MatsuokaMainak Das GuptaGalen J L TiongManizah HuqV GowriSarah K MonroeKevin D DeemThomas WernerYoshinori TomoyasuAntonia Monteiro
Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (2022)
Butterfly eyespots are beautiful novel traits with an unknown developmental origin. Here we show that eyespots likely originated via cooption of parts of an ancestral appendage gene-regulatory network (GRN) to novel locations on the wing. Using comparative transcriptome analysis, we show that eyespots cluster most closely with antennae, relative to multiple other tissues. Furthermore, three genes essential for eyespot development, Distal-less ( Dll ), spalt ( sal ), and Antennapedia ( Antp ), share similar regulatory connections as those observed in the antennal GRN. CRISPR knockout of cis -regulatory elements (CREs) for Dll and sal led to the loss of eyespots, antennae, legs, and also wings, demonstrating that these CREs are highly pleiotropic. We conclude that eyespots likely reused an ancient GRN for their development, a network also previously implicated in the development of antennae, legs, and wings.
Keyphrases
  • genome wide
  • transcription factor
  • minimally invasive
  • dna methylation
  • genome editing