Journal
GENOME BIOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
Volume 4, Issue 3, Pages 346-359Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/gbe/evs012
Keywords
gene expression; d(N)/d(S); sex-biased genes; transcriptomics
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Funding
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [PA 903/4-1, PA 903/6-1]
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Sex-biased gene expression (i.e., the differential expression of genes between males and females) is common among sexually reproducing species. However, genes often differ in their sex-bias classification or degree of sex bias between species. There is also an unequal distribution of sex-biased genes ( especially male-biased genes) between the X chromosome and the autosomes. We used whole-genome expression data and evolutionary rate estimates for two different Drosophilid lineages, melanogaster and obscura, spanning an evolutionary time scale of around 50 Myr to investigate the influence of sex-biased gene expression and chromosomal location on the rate of molecular evolution. In both lineages, the rate of protein evolution correlated positively with the male/female expression ratio. Genes with highly male-biased expression, genes expressed specifically in male reproductive tissues, and genes with conserved male-biased expression over long evolutionary time scales showed the fastest rates of evolution. An analysis of sex-biased gene evolution in both lineages revealed evidence for a fast-X'' effect in which the rate of evolution was greater for X-linked than for autosomal genes. This pattern was particularly pronounced for male-biased genes. Genes located on the obscura neo-X'' chromosome, which originated from a recent X-autosome fusion, showed rates of evolution that were intermediate between genes located on the ancestral X-chromosome and the autosomes. This suggests that the shift to X-linkage led to an increase in the rate of molecular evolution.
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