Where developmental biology meets evolution: Extensive pleiotropy and temperature plasticity for Drosophila developmental time genes.

MENSCH JULIÁN; LAVAGNINO NICOLÁS; CARREIRA VALERIA; HASSON ESTEBAN; FANARA JUAN JOSÉ

Cancún, México

Congreso; 3rd International Meeting of the Latin American Society of Developmental Biology.; 2007

Latin American Society of Developmental Biology.

Understanding the genetic architecture of any complex traitrequires, first and foremost, the identification of the set of genesthat contribute to the manifestation of the trait. This task can beachieved by means of mutagenesis screens. The time to reachthe reproductive age is a quantitative complex and adaptive traitcommonly known as developmental time (DT).We performed ascreen of 179 co-isogenic single p[GT1]-element insertion linesto identify novel genes involved in the genetic architecture ofDT in the model organism Drosophila melanogaster. About65% of the lines differed significantly from a control linesuggesting that the number of genes that affects DT is large. Thecandidate genes involved in the trait include a wide range ofmolecular functional categories, such as transcriptional regulators,signaling molecules and housekeeping componentsrelated to cellular metabolism. This diversity of gene-ontologiesevince a complex genetic architecture. Finally, a subset of 45lines selected at random was also screened at a differentdevelopmental temperature. The significant line by temperatureinteraction observed opens an excellent opportunity to study thegenetic basis of phenotypic plasticity. In this sense, our resultsallowed to identify an important number of genes involved in aplastic response to temperature variation.