Mutational Variation in Gene Expression

Transcript abundance was measured in whole-body virgin male Drosophila serrata from 41 inbred lines that had diverged through 27 generations of mutation accumulation. Pleiotropic mutations are the ultimate source of genetic variation in complex traits, including many human diseases. However, the nature and extent of mutational pleiotropy remain largely unknown. Here, we investigate the variation in 11,604 gene expression traits among 41 mutation accumulation lines of Drosophila serrata, which had diverged for 27 generations. We detected significant mutational variance in 4.6% of ESTs, but 70% of ESTs were invariant among lines, allowing us to reject a null hypothesis of phenome-wide universal pleiotropy. Mutational covariance among ESTs was detected at a frequency of only 1 in 193 random pairs of variable EST, bu t was detected among random combinations of five ESTs in 1 in 5 cases, revealing that mutational covariance among multiple ESTs was common. The observed frequency of significant multivariate covariance among random ESTs implied that a substantial number of ESTs (>70) must be pleiotropically affected by at least some mutations. We measured gene expression of male Drosophila serrata from 41 mutation accumulation lines (whole-body). Data from two replicates for each line are presented.