Shaping of developmental gradients through selection on multiple loci in Antirrhinum Bradley, Desmond Boell, Louis Richardson, Daniel Copsey, Lucy Whibley, Annabel Xu, Ting Zhang, Yu’E Xue, Yongbiao Field, David ; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4014-8478 Coen, Enrico ddc:570 Development depends on precise shaping of molecular gradients, but how natural selection acts to establish precision is unknown. Here, we analyze genes that control differences in the gradient of yellow flower color between two varieties of snapdragon (Antirrhinum). We show that these differences depend, in part, on cis-regulatory variation in the pigment biosynthetic gene, FLAVIA (FLA). FLA interacts multiplicatively with three other loci, one of which is a trans-acting regulator of FLA, to further shape the yellow gradient. All the loci exhibit clines at a hybrid zone, with widths that correlate with phenotypic effect, showing how selection can hone gradient shape with remarkable precision by acting on cis and trans variation at multiple loci. AAAS 2026 info:eu-repo/semantics/article doc-type:article text http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_2df8fbb1 https://research-explorer.ista.ac.at/record/22620 https://research-explorer.ista.ac.at/download/22620/22635 Bradley D, Boell L, Richardson D, et al. Shaping of developmental gradients through selection on multiple loci in Antirrhinum. <i>Science Advances</i>. 2026;12(29):1-11. doi:<a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adx2011">10.1126/sciadv.adx2011</a> eng info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adx2011 info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/e-issn/2375-2548 info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/pmid/42467783 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess