ArticleNature2016
The industrial melanism mutation in British peppered moths is a transposable element.
Article in Nature, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 236 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
236 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 578 citations in OpenAlex.
- Nearby transposable elements impact plant stress gene regulatory networks: a meta-analysis in A. thaliana and S. lycopersicum.BMC genomics · 2022Pooled it
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- How physiology solves the gene-centric impasse.Experimental physiology · 2026Review
- Demography and Localized Reservoirs of Diversity Underlie Global Divergence in the Giant Kelp Macrocystis pyrifera.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- Transposable elements as catalysts of evolutionary innovation.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2026Article
- The evolution of structural variation across 500 million years of vertebrate evolution.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Structural variants are enriched in deleterious visible phenotypes inGenome research · 2026Article
- Recent Polygenic Adaptation in Heavily Fished Malawi Cichlids.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
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- Genetic parallelism underpins convergent mimicry coloration in Lepidoptera across 120 million years of evolution.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Genomics of Caddisfly (Insecta: Trichoptera) Species Associated With Terrestrial Habitats.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Evolutionary genomic basis of mimicry diversity of Epicopeiidae moths.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Transposable elements contribute to the evolution of host shift-related genes in cactophilicGenome research · 2026Article
- Transposable elements contribute substantially to naturally occurring genetic lethality in Drosophila melanogaster.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Population genomics reveals association of transposable elements variants with climatic adaptation in wild Amur grape.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Transposable elements hitchhike on Starships across fungal genomes.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Polymorphic 3D genome architecture mediated by transposable elements.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- The genetics and evolution of moth melanism in the absence of strong natural selection.National science review · 2026Article
176 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Discovering the mutational events that fuel adaptation to environmental change remains an important challenge for evolutionary biology. The classroom example of a visible evolutionary response is industrial melanism in the peppered moth (Biston betularia): the replacement, during the Industrial Revolution, of the common pale typica form by a previously unknown black (carbonaria) form, driven by the interaction between bird predation and coal pollution. The carbonaria locus has been coarsely localized to a 200-kilobase region, but the specific identity and nature of the sequence difference controlling the carbonaria-typica polymorphism, and the gene it influences, are unknown. Here we show that the mutation event giving rise to industrial melanism in Britain was the insertion of a large, tandemly repeated, transposable element into the first intron of the gene cortex. Statistical inference based on the distribution of recombined carbonaria haplotypes indicates that this transposition event occurred around 1819, consistent with the historical record. We have begun to dissect the mode of action of the carbonaria transposable element by showing that it increases the abundance of a cortex transcript, the protein product of which plays an important role in cell-cycle regulation, during early wing disc development. Our findings fill a substantial knowledge gap in the iconic example of microevolutionary change, adding a further layer of insight into the mechanism of adaptation in response to natural selection. The discovery that the mutation itself is a transposable element will stimulate further debate about the importance of 'jumping genes' as a source of major phenotypic novelty.
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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.