Happy to discuss! Comments, questions, and feedback very welcome! 😊

Take-home message

Adaptive changes in gene expression often come with coordinated regulatory evolution.

This joint regulatory + transcriptomic signature provides a roadmap to identify loci contributing to species-specific traits.

Example: glycogen metabolism

Shifted genes highlight key processes in mole-rat physiology. For example, we confirm an isozyme switch in mole-rat hearts:

-Pygl is up-regulated in the ancestral mole-rat branch with new enhancer activity.
-Pygm is down-regulated specifically in NMR.

Genes with expression shifts also show concordant regulatory evolution.
Promoters and enhancers with shifted H3K27ac activity line up with expression changes.

Thousands of genes differ between species — but which changes matter? 🤔
EVE tells us: only ~10–15% of DE shows lineage-specific adaptive evolution.
Neutral drift is everywhere… and that’s why phylogeny-aware models are essential! 🚀🧬

Mole-rats are remarkable rodents — subterranean, long-lived, tolerant to hypoxia, and physiologically unusual.

We profiled liver and heart transcriptomes and cis-regulatory elements in naked mole-rat (NMR), Damaraland mole-rat (DMR), guinea pig, and mouse.