ArticlePLoS genetics2018
bric à brac (bab), a central player in the gene regulatory network that mediates thermal plasticity of pigmentation in Drosophila melanogaster.
Article in PLoS genetics, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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18 citing papers in PubMed, 45 citations in OpenAlex.
- Hippo signaling regulates cuticle pigmentation and dopamine metabolism in Drosophila.PLoS genetics · 2026Article
- Parallel clines of chromosomal inversion frequencies in seaweed flies are associated with thermal variation.Heredity · 2026Article
- Evolution of dominance in a Mendelian trait is linked to the evolution of environmental plasticity.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2026Article
- microRNAs affecting development of body pigmentation in adult Drosophila melanogaster.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Redundant and Singular Regulatory Elements Underlie the Rapidly Evolving Pigmentation of Drosophila.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Evolution of dominance in a Mendelian trait is linked to the evolution of environmental plasticity.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- The black honey bee genome: insights on specific structural elements and a first step towards pangenomes.Genetics, selection, evolution : GSE · 2024Article
- The H3K79me3 methyl-transferase Grappa is involved in the establishment and thermal plasticity of abdominal pigmentation in Drosophila melanogaster females.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Thermal plasticity of wing size and wing spot size in Drosophila guttifera.Development genes and evolution · 2023Article
- Drosophilids with darker cuticle have higher body temperature under light.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Article
- A genetic switch for male UV iridescence in an incipient species pair of sulphur butterflies.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- From Aedes to Zeugodacus: a review of dipteran body coloration studies regarding evolutionary developmental biology, pest control, and species discovery.Current opinion in genetics & development · 2021Review
- Many ways to make darker flies: Intra- and interspecific variation inEcology and evolution · 2021Article
- The modular expression patterns of three pigmentation genes prefigure unique abdominal morphologies seen among three Drosophila species.Gene expression patterns : GEP · 2020Article
- The genomics of coloration provides insights into adaptive evolution.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2020Review
- Seasonal plasticity in anti-predatory strategies: Matching of color and color preference for effective crypsis.Evolution letters · 2019Article
- Genomics of Developmental Plasticity in Animals.Frontiers in genetics · 2019Review
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Drosophila body pigmentation has emerged as a major Evo-Devo model. Using two Drosophila melanogaster lines, Dark and Pale, selected from a natural population, we analyse here the interaction between genetic variation and environmental factors to produce this complex trait. Indeed, pigmentation varies with genotype in natural populations and is sensitive to temperature during development. We demonstrate that the bric à brac (bab) genes, that are differentially expressed between the two lines and whose expression levels vary with temperature, participate in the pigmentation difference between the Dark and Pale lines. The two lines differ in a bab regulatory sequence, the dimorphic element (called here bDE). Both bDE alleles are temperature-sensitive, but the activity of the bDE allele from the Dark line is lower than that of the bDE allele from the Pale line. Our results suggest that this difference could partly be due to differential regulation by AbdB. bab has been previously reported to be a repressor of abdominal pigmentation. We show here that one of its targets in this process is the pigmentation gene tan (t), regulated via the tan abdominal enhancer (t_MSE). Furthermore, t expression is strongly modulated by temperature in the two lines. Thus, temperature sensitivity of t expression is at least partly a consequence of bab thermal transcriptional plasticity. We therefore propose that a gene regulatory network integrating both genetic variation and temperature sensitivity modulates female abdominal pigmentation. Interestingly, both bDE and t_MSE were previously shown to have been recurrently involved in abdominal pigmentation evolution in drosophilids. We propose that the environmental sensitivity of these enhancers has turned them into evolutionary hotspots.
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