Conservation of Regulatory Elements with Highly Diverged Sequences Across Large Evolutionary Distances [RNA-seq]

Embryonic gene expression is remarkably conserved across vertebrates as observed, for instance, in the developing hearts of chicken and mouse which diverged >300 million years ago. However, most cis regulatory elements (CREs) are highly divergent, which makes orthology tracing based on sequence similarity difficult, especially at larger evolutionary distances. Some evidence suggests functional conservation of CREs despite sequence divergence. However, it remains unclear how widespread such functional conservation might be. Overall design: RNA-seq from embryonic chicken heart at HH22 and HH24, with 2 biological replicates