Version 1
: Received: 27 February 2024 / Approved: 28 February 2024 / Online: 28 February 2024 (15:59:48 CET)
How to cite:
Coyle, M.; King, N. The Evolutionary Foundations of Animal Transcriptional Regulatory Mechanisms. Preprints2024, 2024021653. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202402.1653.v1
Coyle, M.; King, N. The Evolutionary Foundations of Animal Transcriptional Regulatory Mechanisms. Preprints 2024, 2024021653. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202402.1653.v1
Coyle, M.; King, N. The Evolutionary Foundations of Animal Transcriptional Regulatory Mechanisms. Preprints2024, 2024021653. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202402.1653.v1
APA Style
Coyle, M., & King, N. (2024). The Evolutionary Foundations of Animal Transcriptional Regulatory Mechanisms. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202402.1653.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Coyle, M. and Nicole King. 2024 "The Evolutionary Foundations of Animal Transcriptional Regulatory Mechanisms" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202402.1653.v1
Abstract
Animals are distinguished by their complex developmental programs, in which transcription factors play essential roles in coordinating the regulation of the genome. Thus, it has been hypothesized that animal origins involved the evolution of increasingly complex transcriptional regulatory mechanisms that permit greater spatiotemporal control over gene expression. Here, we revisit this hypothesis in light of new genomic and functional data from diverse phylogenetically-relevant taxa, including early branching animals (sponges, ctenophores) and close relatives of animals (choanoflagellates, filastereans, ichthyosporeans). We argue that many of the mechanisms posited to explain animal transcriptional complexity, such as large increases in transcription factor numbers, new transcription factor families, and distal enhancers, did not factor significantly into animal origins. Instead, we propose that the re-purposing of pre-existing transcriptional regulatory modules through cis-regulatory evolution and gene duplication events, combined with new protein-protein interactions among TFs, may have been fundamental to the transcriptional regulatory architecture of the first animals.
Biology and Life Sciences, Cell and Developmental Biology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.