Old genes learning new tricks: characterising regulatory changes driving increased heart complexity during vertebrate evolution

在脊椎动物进化过程中，心脏的形态复杂性急剧增加，但驱动这些主要变化的分子基础仍然未知。使用比较基因组学方法，该项目将探索心脏形成相关基因调控的变化，从而导致心脏结构的变化。它将首次阐明斑马鱼的心脏调节功能，并将使用尖端的生物信息学管道将其与苍蝇和小鼠进行比较。这项工作将揭示引起进化变化的心脏特异性调节修饰。在更广泛的范围内，它将揭示新性状出现中调控创新对基因创新的作用。

The heart has dramatically increased in morphological complexity during vertebrate evolution but the molecular basis driving these major changes remains unknown. Using comparative genomics approaches, this project will explore changes in the regulation of genes involved in heart formation that lead to changes in cardiac structure. It will elucidate for the first time the cardiac regulatory repertoire in zebrafish and will compare it with that of fly and mouse using cutting-edge bioinformatics pipelines. This work will unravel cardiac-specific regulatory modifications that give rise to evolutionary changes. On a broader scale, it will shed new light on the role of regulatory innovations over gene innovations in the emergence of new traits.