Plessy, C., Dickmeis, T., Chalmel, F., and Strähle, U. (2005) Enhancer sequence conservation between vertebrates is favoured in developmental regulator genes. Trends in genetics : TIG. 21(4):207-210.
ABSTRACT
Sequence conservation has been used to find genes and to pinpoint functional non-coding sequences such as transcriptional regulatory elements. In this article, we analysed the conservation of 104 experimentally validated murine enhancer sequences between the mouse and zebrafish genomes. Surprisingly, only 10.5% of the mouse enhancers have homologues in zebrafish. All of the genes with conserved cis-elements have regulatory functions during embryonic development, perhaps reflecting substantial structural constraints on the integration of spatio-temporal signalling cues during the formation of the vertebrate body.
