Data from: The impact of gene expression variation on robustness and evolvability of a developmental gene regulatory network

Regulatory interactions buffer development against genetic and environmental perturbations, but adaptation requires phenotypes to change. We investigated the relationship between robustness and evolvability within the gene regulatory network underlying development of the larval skeleton in the sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. We find extensive variation in gene expression in this network throughout development in a natural population, some of which has a heritable genetic basis. Switch-like regulatory interactions predominate during early development, buffer expression variation, and may promote the accumulation of cryptic genetic variation affecting early stages. Regulatory interactions during later development are typically more sensitive (linear), allowing variation in expression to affect downstream target genes. Variation in skeletal morphology is associated primarily with expression variation of a few, primarily structural, genes at terminal positions within the network. These results indicate that the position and properties of gene interactions within a network can have important evolutionary consequences independent of their immediate regulatory role.Expression DataThese files contain expression data, both in its pre-processed form and the actual data we used to generate the results. We've also included the scripts used to process the Illumina data as described in the supplementary materials.expression.zipMorphology DataThese folders contain text versions of the morphology data (morphological landmark locations) as well scripts used to transform these data into length data used in the analyses. The file "allResults_26Aug.csv" contains the final transformed data (the location in space of each morphological landmark). "AveMeasures_aveCulture.txt" has averaged data that was used in the 2B-PLS analyses. Due to size restrictions, we cannot upload the raw images, however we are happy to provide them on request.morphology_processing.zi