Developmental transcriptome of Japanese medaka embryos (Hybrid F3 descendants between Hd-rR and Teradomari)

It has been proposed that the developmental stability may contribute to the evolutionary conservation of phenotypes. However, no causal relationship has been demonstrated, beyond correlations between developmental and evolutionary phenomena. Here, we conducted a quasi-evolutionary experiment to test whether phenotypes and genes with developmental stability are less likely to diversify through evolution. Assuming the medaka (O. latipes) inbred line as the ancestor, we generated a descendant population with nucleotide substitutions introduced by crossing with the wild population. Intraspecies conservation was evaluated using transcriptional data from various embryonic developmental stages (st.15, st.23.5, st.28, Hatch). We found that phenotypes and genes with developmental stability in the ancestral population were more conserved in the descendant population, supporting our hypothesis.