retroviral enhancer detection insertions in zebrafish combined with comparative genomics reveal genomic regulatory blocks - a fundamental feature of vertebrate genomes逆转录病毒增强器检测插入在斑马鱼结合比较基因组学揭示基因组监管块u2014u2014脊椎动物基因组的一个基本特征.pdfVIP

Review Retroviral enhancer detection insertions in zebrafish combined with comparative genomics reveal genomic regulatory blocks - a fundamental feature of vertebrate genomes † ‡ ‡ Hiroshi Kikuta* , David Fredman* , Silke Rinkwitz*, Boris Lenhard* and Thomas S Becker* *Sars Centre for Marine Molecular Biology, University of Bergen, Thormoehlensgate, 5008 Bergen, Norway. †Present address: Division of Molecular and Developmental Biology, National Institute of Genetics, 1111 Yata, Mishima, Shizuoka 411-8540, Japan. ‡Computational Biology Unit, University of Bergen, Thormoehlensgate, 5008 Bergen, Norway. Correspondence: Boris Lenhard. E-mail: Boris.Lenhard@bccs.uib.no. Thomas S Becker. E-mail: Tom.Becker@sars.uib.no Published: 31 October 2007 Genome Biology 2007, 8(Suppl 1):S4 (doi:10.1186/gb-2007-8-S1-S4) The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at /2007/8/S1/S4 © 2007 BioMed Central Ltd Abstract A large-scale enhancer detection screen was performed in the zebrafish using a retroviral vector carrying a basal promoter and a fluorescent protein reporter cassette. Analysis of insertional hotspots uncovered areas around developmental regulatory genes in which an insertion results in the same global expression pattern, irrespective of exact position. These areas coincide with vertebrate chromosomal segments containing identical gene order; a phenomenon known as conserved synteny and thought to be a vestige of evolution. Genomic comparative studies have found large numbers of highly conserved noncoding elements (HCNEs) spanning these and other loci. HCNEs are thoug