Towards a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between sex-biased gene expression and rates of protein-coding sequence evolution.
Genes that are differentially expressed between the sexes (sex-biased genes) are among the fastest evolving genes in animal genomes. The majority of sex-biased expression is attributable to genes that are primarily expressed in sex-limited reproductive tissues, and these reproductive genes are often rapidly evolving because of intra- and intersexual selection pressures. Additionally, studies of multiple taxa have revealed that genes with sex-biased expression are also expressed in a limited number of tissues. This is worth noting because narrowly expressed genes are known to evolve faster than broadly expressed genes. Therefore, it is not clear whether sex-biased genes are rapidly evolving because they have sexually dimorphic expression, because they are expressed in sex-limited reproductive tissues, or because they are narrowly expressed. To determine the extend to which other confounding variables can explain the rapid evolution of sex-biased genes, I analyzed the rates of evolution of sex-biased genes in Drosophila melanogaster and Mus musculus in light of tissue-specific measures of expression. I find that genes with sex-biased expression in somatic tissues shared by both sexes are often evolving faster than non-sex-biased genes, but this is best explained by the narrow expression profiles of sex-biased genes. Sex-biased genes in sex-limited tissues in D. melanogaster, however, evolve faster than other narrowly expressed genes. Therefore, the rapid evolution of sex-biased genes is limited only to those genes primarily expressed in sex-limited reproductive tissues.
Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Cornell University, USA. meisel@cornell.edu
Richard P
RP
Meisel
D000818:Animals; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster / Q000235:genetics; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D005260:Female; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D016366:Open Reading Frames / Q000235:genetics*; D009928:Organ Specificity / Q000235:genetics; D012098:Reproduction / Q000235:genetics; D012737:Sex Factors; D014960:X Chromosome / Q000235:genetics
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