While developmental phenotypes are often multigenic and involve environmental inputs, most research approaches involve perturbation of small numbers of genes. Here they use a synthetic evolution approach in Drosophila to show that adding extra copies of bicoid leads to rapid, system-wide phenotypic responses, potentiated by highly polygenic traits such as embryo size.
- Xueying C. Li
- Lautaro Gandara
- Justin Crocker
