Adaptive evolution of non-coding DNA in Drosophila

Peter Andolfatto ()
Additional contact information
Peter Andolfatto: University of California San Diego

Nature, 2005, vol. 437, issue 7062, 1149-1152

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.

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature04107 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:nature:v:437:y:2005:i:7062:d:10.1038_nature04107

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

DOI: 10.1038/nature04107

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

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