IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v437y2005i7062d10.1038_nature04107.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Adaptive evolution of non-coding DNA in Drosophila

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Andolfatto

    (University of California San Diego)

Abstract

The sound of silent DNA Time to junk the term ‘junk DNA’, or to reserve it for DNA of proven uselessness. Geneticists favour the less judgmental term ‘non-coding DNA’ for those parts of the genome not translated into protein, and there is growing evidence that it is important in disease, development and evolution. Despite this, little is known about the evolutionary forces acting on it. Now a new population genetics approach shows that most non-coding DNA in Drosophila melanogaster is subject to adaptive evolution and selection. The big surprise comes from a comparison between Drosophila species: a significant fraction of the divergence between species in non-coding DNA is adaptive, driven by positive selection. In fact, the number of beneficial substitutions in non-coding DNA is an order of magnitude larger than in proteins. Non-coding DNA includes ‘cis-acting’ regulatory sequences, so this finding may reflect the immense importance of regulatory evolution, previously suggested on intuitive grounds.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Andolfatto, 2005. "Adaptive evolution of non-coding DNA in Drosophila," Nature, Nature, vol. 437(7062), pages 1149-1152, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:437:y:2005:i:7062:d:10.1038_nature04107
    DOI: 10.1038/nature04107
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature04107
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/nature04107?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sella, Guy, 2009. "An exact steady state solution of Fisher’s geometric model and other models," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 30-34.
    2. Kirsten E Eilertson & James G Booth & Carlos D Bustamante, 2012. "SnIPRE: Selection Inference Using a Poisson Random Effects Model," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(12), pages 1-14, December.
    3. Piaopiao Chen & Jianzhi Zhang, 2024. "The loci of environmental adaptation in a model eukaryote," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-15, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:437:y:2005:i:7062:d:10.1038_nature04107. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.