ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2008
Adaptive changes in the transcription factor HoxA-11 are essential for the evolution of pregnancy in mammals.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 50 papers.
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Who cites it
50 citing papers in PubMed, 102 citations in OpenAlex.
- The molecular evolution of vertebrate organs.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Review
- The Emerging Role of Prolactin as a Biomarker for Reproduction, Health, and Welfare in Wildlife Species: Elephants as a Model.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2026Review
- Cell type and cell signalling innovations underlying mammalian pregnancy.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- WT1 directs normal progesterone receptor-chromatin binding essential for uterine receptivity at peri-implantation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Evolutionary innovations in germline biology of placental mammals identified by transcriptomics of first-wave spermatogenesis in opossum.Developmental cell · 2025Article
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- Genomic Signatures Associated with Transitions to Viviparity in Cyprinodontiformes.Molecular biology and evolution · 2023Article
- Genome biology of the darkedged splitfin,Genome research · 2022Article
- Article
- Mammalian-specific ectodermal enhancers control the expression ofProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Phosphoregulation of a Conserved Herpesvirus Tegument Protein by a Virally Encoded Protein Kinase in Viral Pathogenicity and Potential Linkage between Its Evolution and Viral Phylogeny.Journal of virology · 2020Article
- Heparin prevents oxidative stress-induced apoptosis in human decidualized endometrial stromal cells.Medical molecular morphology · 2019Article
- Adult bone marrow progenitors become decidual cells and contribute to embryo implantation and pregnancy.PLoS biology · 2019Article
- Intrinsic cooperativity potentiates paralleleLife · 2018Article
- The mammalian decidual cell evolved from a cellular stress response.PLoS biology · 2018Article
- Characteristic Changes in Decidual Gene Expression Signature in Spontaneous Term Parturition.Journal of pathology and translational medicine · 2017Article
- Gene Regulation and Speciation.Trends in genetics : TIG · 2017Review
- The origin and evolution of cell types.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2016Review
- Control of Hoxd gene transcription in the mammary bud by hijacking a preexisting regulatory landscape.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2016Article
- Parallel evolution of male germline epigenetic poising and somatic development in animals.Nature genetics · 2016Article
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 4 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Evolutionary change in gene regulation can result from changes in cis-regulatory elements, leading to differences in the temporal and spatial expression of genes or in the coding region of transcription factors leading to novel functions or both. Although there is a growing body of evidence supporting the importance of cis-regulatory evolution, examples of protein-mediated evolution of novel developmental pathways have not been demonstrated. Here, we investigate the evolution of prolactin (PRL) expression in endometrial cells, which is essential for placentation/pregnancy in eutherian mammals and is a direct regulatory target of the transcription factor HoxA-11. Here, we show that (i) endometrial PRL expression is a derived feature of placental mammals, (ii) the PRL regulatory gene HoxA-11 experienced a period of strong positive selection in the stem-lineage of eutherian mammals, and (iii) only HoxA-11 proteins from placental mammals, including the reconstructed ancestral eutherian gene, are able to up-regulate PRL from the promoter used in endometrial cells. In contrast, HoxA-11 from the reconstructed therian ancestor, opossum, platypus, and chicken are unable to up-regulate PRL expression. These results demonstrate that the evolution of novel gene expression domains is not only mediated by the evolution of cis-regulatory elements but can also require evolutionary changes of transcription factor proteins themselves.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.