Meeting Abstract

123.1  Tuesday, Jan. 7 13:30  Using ChIP-Seq to identify limb enhancers in the lizard genus Anolis INFANTE, C.R.*; PARK, S.; MIHALA, A.; MENKE, D.B.; University of Georgia; University of Georgia; University of Georgia; University of Georgia cinfante@uga.edu

The vertebrate limb is a classic model for studies of signaling and patterning in developmental biology. Although many important pathways have been identified, the regulatory interactions that drive the development of this complex system are still largely unknown. With advances in technology a global understanding of these interactions is now possible, even in non-model organisms. To discover limb enhancers that may not be highly conserved in the genome, we performed ChIP-Seq on embryonic tissues from the lizard Anolis carolinensis using antibodies against the acetylated histone mark H3K27ac and the hindlimb transcription factor Pitx1. Comparisons between these ChIP-Seq datasets enabled us to identify enhancers active only in the forelimbs, only in the hindlimbs, or that are shared between them. Additionally, we compared these datasets to similar data from developing mouse tissues to examine the rate of conservation or turnover at these sites. In the future we hope to use the enhancer lists derived from these data to study the evolution of the the cis-regulatory control of limb development and morphology within the genus Anolis.