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Shadow enhancers enable Hunchback bifunctionality in the Drosophila embryo

Significance Enhancers are regions of regulatory DNA that control gene expression and cell fate decisions during development. Enhancers compute the expression pattern of their target gene by reading the concentrations of input regulatory proteins. Many developmental genes contain multiple enhancers that control the same output pattern, but it is unclear whether these enhancers all compute the pattern in the same way. We use measurements in single cells and computational models in Drosophila embryos to demonstrate that two enhancers that encode the same gene expression pattern compute differently: the same regulatory protein represses one enhancer and activates the other. Pairs of enhancers that generate the same pattern by performing different computations may impart special properties to developmental systems. Hunchback (Hb) is a bifunctional transcription factor that activates and represses distinct enhancers. Here, we investigate the hypothesis that Hb can activate and repress the same enhancer. Computational models predicted that Hb bifunctionally regulates the even-skipped (eve) stripe 3+7 enhancer (eve3+7) in Drosophila blastoderm embryos. We measured and modeled eve expression at cellular resolution under multiple genetic perturbations and found that the eve3+7 enhancer could not explain endogenous eve stripe 7 behavior. Instead, we found that eve stripe 7 is controlled by two enhancers: the canonical eve3+7 and a sequence encompassing the minimal eve stripe 2 enhancer (eve2+7). Hb bifunctionally regulates eve stripe 7, but it executes these two activities on different pieces of regulatory DNA—it activates the eve2+7 enhancer and represses the eve3+7 enhancer. These two “shadow enhancers” use different regulatory logic to create the same pattern.