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Member Symposium

Phenotypic Plasticity in Insects as Experienced Through Art, Science, and Culture

The butterfly wing pattern plasticity gene cortex is an upstream regulator of the hippo cell cycle pathway

Sunday, November 13, 2022

3:55 PM – 4:25 PM PT

Location: Vancouver Convention Centre, Meeting Room 110

Presenting Author(s)

RF

Richard A. Fandino

Post-Doctoral Research Associate
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York

Co-Author(s)

Karin van der Burg

Postdoctoral Fellow
The University of British Columbia
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Co-author(s)

JM

Jeanne C. McDonald

Cornell University
Geneva, New York

Co-Author(s)

RR

Robert Reed

Principal Investigator
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York

The common buckeye butterfly, Junonia coenia, exhibits a wide range of wing pattern variation related to seasonal plasticity. cis-regulatory variation at the cortex gene, a putative developmental cell cycle regulator, has been shown to be genetically associated with seasonal wing pattern plasticity in J. coenia. In this study we used CRISPR-Cas9 to validate cis-regulatory element function across the cortex locus, and thus characterized multiple non-coding regions that control wing pigmentation. We established a viable mutant line (Jc.ivory) affecting a non-coding element that appears to have a wing pattern-specific effect where all wing pigmentation is reduced or lost. RNA-seq of developing Jc.ivory wing tissue revealed that cortex is an upstream regulator of cell growth and determination pathway genes, and has an especially strong influence on the cell cycle regulator hippo. To our knowledge, these results are the first to implicate hippo signaling in color pattern development, and are consistent with earlier models linking wing pattern specification to scale cell maturation cycles. Our functional interrogation of the cortex locus highlights a potentially novel color pattern regulation mechanism in J. coenia, and provides an experimentally validated cis-regulatory map for further studies of color pattern evolution and plasticity.