Primary and Shadow Enhancers of Dorsal - Ventral Patterning Genes in Drosophila melanogaster

Recent studies have revealed that multiple enhancers can activate the transcription of a gene. They can be classified as primary or shadow enhancers. Earlier studies suggested that many dorsal target genes of Drosophila melanogaster might be regulated by these shadow enhancers. Therefore, primary and shadow enhancers of five different dorsal targeting genes viz., zen, sim, vnd, bun, and rho were predicted in this study. In addition, novel cluster motifs with high strand scores have been predicted and are referred to as primary enhancers, whereas similar sequences within 5kb are referred to as shadow enhancers. The information generated from this study may lead to the evolutionary innovation of enhancer mechanisms.