title: Functional genome annotation of Drosophila seminal fluid proteins using transcriptional genetic networks.
abstract: Predicting functional gene annotations remains a significant challenge, even in well-annotated genomes such as yeast and Drosophila. One promising, high-throughput method for gene annotation is to use correlated gene expression patterns to annotate target genes based on the known function of focal genes. The Drosophila melanogaster transcriptome varies genetically among wild-derived inbred lines, with strong genetic correlations among the transcripts. Here, we leveraged the genetic correlations in gene expression among known seminal fluid protein (SFP) genes and the rest of the genetically varying transcriptome to identify 176 novel candidate SFPs (cSFPs). We independently validated the correlation in gene expression between seven of the cSFPs and a known SFP gene, as well as expression in male reproductive tissues. We argue that this method can be extended to other systems for which information on genetic variation in gene expression is available.
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetics, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA.
authors.forename: Julien F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Ayroles
authors.forename: Brooke A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Laflamme
authors.forename: Eric A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Stone
authors.forename: Mariana F
authors.initials: MF
authors.lastname: Wolfner
authors.forename: Trudy F C
authors.initials: TF
authors.lastname: Mackay
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D029721:Drosophila Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster / Q000235:genetics*; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D053263:Gene Regulatory Networks; D049750:Genome, Insect / Q000235:genetics*; D008297:Male; D008957:Models, Genetic; D058977:Molecular Sequence Annotation / Q000379:methods*; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D029589:Seminal Plasma Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D059467:Transcriptome
chemical_list: D029721:Drosophila Proteins; D029589:Seminal Plasma Proteins