Higher-order epistasis shapes natural variation in germ stem cell niche activity

Sarah R. Fausett (), Asma Sandjak, Bénédicte Billard and Christian Braendle ()
Additional contact information
Sarah R. Fausett: Université Côte d’Azur, CNRS, Inserm, IBV
Asma Sandjak: Université Côte d’Azur, CNRS, Inserm, IBV
Bénédicte Billard: Université Côte d’Azur, CNRS, Inserm, IBV
Christian Braendle: Université Côte d’Azur, CNRS, Inserm, IBV

Nature Communications, 2023, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-15

Abstract: Abstract To study how natural allelic variation explains quantitative developmental system variation, we characterized natural differences in germ stem cell niche activity, measured as progenitor zone (PZ) size, between two Caenorhabditis elegans isolates. Linkage mapping yielded candidate loci on chromosomes II and V, and we found that the isolate with a smaller PZ size harbours a 148 bp promoter deletion in the Notch ligand, lag-2/Delta, a central signal promoting germ stem cell fate. As predicted, introducing this deletion into the isolate with a large PZ resulted in a smaller PZ size. Unexpectedly, restoring the deleted ancestral sequence in the isolate with a smaller PZ did not increase—but instead further reduced—PZ size. These seemingly contradictory phenotypic effects are explained by epistatic interactions between the lag-2/Delta promoter, the chromosome II locus, and additional background loci. These results provide first insights into the quantitative genetic architecture regulating an animal stem cell system.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38527-0 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:14:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-023-38527-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-38527-0

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().