Higher-order epistasis shapes natural variation in germ stem cell niche activity
- Others:
- Institut de Biologie Valrose (IBV) ; Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (1965 - 2019) (UNS)-Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Côte d'Azur (UniCA)
- Institut de Recherche sur le Cancer et le Vieillissement (IRCAN) ; Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (1965 - 2019) (UNS)-Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Côte d'Azur (UniCA)
Citation
Description
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.
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International audience
Additional details
- URL
- https://hal.science/hal-04750837
- URN
- urn:oai:HAL:hal-04750837v1
- Origin repository
- UNICA