Dissecting functional regulatory convergence over 160 million years of therian evolution.

Convergent regulatory evolution in thylacine and wolf is limited, with only one region showing similar activity reduction near the LMO4 gene.

• Why it matters: Understanding how molecular mechanisms drive convergent traits can reveal the predictability of evolution, especially over millions of years.
• What they did: Using a massively parallel reporter assay, researchers tested 10 bp tiled sequences of conserved craniofacial enhancers across six taxa, including outgroups and ancestral reconstructions, to assess regulatory activity.
• The result: Findings show conserved regulatory activity patterns across taxa, with limited convergent divergence, suggesting shared gene regulatory potential is not common in regions associated with craniofacial convergence.