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HEREDITAS ›› 2013, Vol. 35 ›› Issue (1): 35-44.doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1005.2013.00035

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Research progress of conserved non-coding elements in metazoan

FENG Jun, LI Guang, WANG Yi-Quan   

  1. State Key Laboratory of the Cellular Stress Biology, School of life science, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China
  • Received:2012-06-30 Revised:2012-09-10 Online:2013-01-20 Published:2013-01-25

Abstract: In addition to protein coding sequence, the organism genome contains a significant amount of regulatory DNA. Comparative genomics reveals that the organism genomes of vertebrates, tunicate, cephalochordate, flies, and nematodes contain cis-regulatory elements with highly conserved non-coding elements (CNEs). CNEs that cluster around trans-dev genes are part of core gene regulatory networks (GRNs), and usually, they can act as transcriptional enhancers. In this review, we described the identification of CNEs and summarized their key properties across the metazoans, and then discussed the evolution of CNEs after large-scale genome duplication events and the role of CNEs in the evolution of ani-mal body plan.

Key words: cis-regulation, conserved non-coding elements, comparative genomics, enhancer, body plan