Physics

Genetic variation

Evolutionary biology

Biology

Phylogenetics

Gene

Gene expression

Function (biology)

Molecular evolution

Artificial intelligence

Regulation of gene expression

Human evolutionary genetics

Variation (astronomy)

Computer science

Astrophysics

Gene regulatory network

Computational biology

Natural selection

Genetics

Selection (genetic algorithm)

Nature Reviews Genetics

Heritable variation in gene expression is common within and between species. This variation arises from mutations that alter the form or function of molecular gene regulatory networks that are then filtered by natural selection. High-throughput methods for introducing mutations and characterizing their cis- and trans-regulatory effects on gene expression (particularly, transcription) are revealing how different molecular mechanisms generate regulatory variation, and studies comparing these mutational effects with variation seen in the wild are teasing apart the role of neutral and non-neutral evolutionary processes. This integration of molecular and evolutionary biology allows us to understand how the variation in gene expression we see today came to be and to predict how it is most likely to evolve in the future. In this Review, Hill et al. discuss how high-throughput methods for creating and characterizing mutations are providing insight into how regulatory variation is generated and evolves.

Molecular and evolutionary processes generating variation in gene expression