Genome-wide misexpression of X-linked versus autosomal genes associated with hybrid male sterility
- Xuemei Lu1,2,7,
- Joshua A. Shapiro3,7,
- Chau-Ti Ting4,5,
- Yan Li2,
- Chunyan Li1,
- Jin Xu1,
- Huanwei Huang1,
- Ya-Jen Cheng5,
- Anthony J. Greenberg3,
- Shou-Hsien Li6,
- Mao-Lien Wu3,
- Yang Shen2 and
- Chung-I Wu1,2,3,8
- 1CAS Key Laboratory of Genome Sciences and Information, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, People's Republic of China;
- 2State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol and International Center for Evolutionary and Genomic Studies, School of Life Science, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, People's Republic of China;
- 3Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA;
- 4Department of Life Science, Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology & Institute of Zoology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan 10667, Republic of China;
- 5Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan 30013, Republic of China;
- 6Department of Life Science, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei 106, Taiwan, Republic of China
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↵7 These authors contributed equally to this work.
Abstract
Postmating reproductive isolation is often manifested as hybrid male sterility, for which X-linked genes are overrepresented (the so-called large X effect). In contrast, X-linked genes are significantly under-represented among testis-expressing genes. This seeming contradiction may be germane to the X:autosome imbalance hypothesis on hybrid sterility, in which the X-linked effect is mediated mainly through the misexpression of autosomal genes. In this study, we compared gene expression in fertile and sterile males in the hybrids between two Drosophila species. These hybrid males differ only in a small region of the X chromosome containing the Ods-site homeobox (OdsH) (also known as Odysseus) locus of hybrid sterility. Of genes expressed in the testis, autosomal genes were, indeed, more likely to be misexpressed than X-linked genes under the sterilizing action of OdsH. Since this mechanism of X:autosome interaction is only associated with spermatogenesis, a connection between X:autosome imbalance and the high rate of hybrid male sterility seems plausible.
Footnotes
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↵8 Corresponding author.
E-mail ciwu{at}uchicago.edu; fax (773) 702-9740.
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[Supplemental material is available online at http://www.genome.org. The microarray data from this study have been submitted to the NCBI Gene Expression Omnibus (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo) under accession no. GSE21734, and the RNA-seq data have been submitted to the NCBI Sequence Read Archive (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Traces/sra) under accession no. SRA012675.]
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Article published online before print. Article and publication date are at http://www.genome.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gr.076620.108.
- Received January 29, 2008.
- Accepted May 19, 2010.
- Copyright © 2010 by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
