title: Paternal diet affects differential gene expression, but not sperm competition, in sons.
abstract: Parental environment can widely influence offspring phenotype, but paternal effects in the absence of parental care remain poorly understood. We asked if protein content in the larval diet of fathers affected paternity success and gene expression in their sons. We found that males reared on high-protein diet had sons that fared better during sperm competition, suggesting that postcopulatory sexual selection is subject to transgenerational paternal effects. Moreover, immune response genes were downregulated in sons of low-protein fathers, while genes involved in metabolic and reproductive processes were upregulated.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA.|School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
authors.forename: Felix
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-6010-6112
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Zajitschek
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA.|School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.|Doñana Biological Station, EBD-CSIC, Seville, Spain.
authors.forename: Susanne
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-4676-9950
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zajitschek
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA manier@gwu.edu.
authors.forename: Mollie
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-9114-8649
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Manier
mesh_terms: D000824:Animal Nutritional Physiological Phenomena; D000818:Animals; D004044:Dietary Proteins; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D007814:Larva / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D017423:Sequence Analysis, RNA; D013094:Spermatozoa / Q000502:physiology
chemical_list: D004044:Dietary Proteins
keywords: RNAseq; gene expression; parental effects; postcopulatory sexual selection; transcriptomics; transgenerational effects