Abstract
Abundant evidence indicates that developmental evolution, the foundation of morphological evolution, is based on changes in gene function. Over the past decade a consensus has developed that transcriptional regulation, acting through enhancer sequences, is the primary level of evolutionarily significant change. Here we propose that other regulatory levels are probably as important as enhancers in developmental evolution. We also explain why these alternative regulatory levels might have been neglected, and briefly discuss ways to test our hypothesis.
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Acknowledgements
C.R.A. wishes to thank The Wellcome Trust for support, and members of the Laboratory for Development and Evolution for helpful comments and discussions on the ideas in this manuscript. The authors wish to thank the comments of two anonymous referees, which have contributed to improving the quality of this manuscript.
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Alonso, C., Wilkins, A. The molecular elements that underlie developmental evolution. Nat Rev Genet 6, 709–715 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg1676
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg1676
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