A fundamental challenge in biology is explaining the origin of novel phenotypic characters such as new cell types; the molecular mechanisms that give rise to novelties are unclear. We explored the gene regulatory landscape of mammalian endometrial cells using comparative RNA-Seq and found that 1,532 genes were recruited into endometrial expression in placental mammals, indicating that the evolution of pregnancy was associated with a large-scale rewiring of the gene regulatory network. About 13% of recruited genes are within 200 kb of a Eutherian-specific transposable element (MER20). These transposons have the epigenetic signatures of enhancers, insulators and repressors, directly bind transcription factors essential for pregnancy and coordinately regulate gene expression in response to progesterone and cAMP. We conclude that the transposable element, MER20, contributed to the origin of a novel gene regulatory network dedicated to pregnancy in placental mammals, particularly by recruiting the cAMP signaling pathway into endometrial stromal cells.

Biological gene networks appear to be dynamically robust to mutation, stochasticity, and changes in the environment and also appear to be sparsely connected. Studies with computational models, however, have suggested that denser gene networks evolve to be more dynamically robust than sparser networks. We resolve this discrepancy by showing that misassumptions about how to measure robustness in artificial networks have inadvertently discounted the costs of network complexity. We show that when the costs of complexity are taken into account, that robustness implies a parsimonious network structure that is sparsely connected and not unnecessarily complex; and that selection will favor sparse networks when network topology is free to evolve. Because a robust system of heredity is necessary for the adaptive evolution of complex phenotypes, the maintenance of frugal network complexity is likely a crucial design constraint that underlies biological organization.

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