10.5061/DRYAD.C59ZW3R60
Khila, Abderrahman
0000-0003-0908-483X
French National Centre for Scientific Research
Toubiana, William
French National Centre for Scientific Research
Armisen, David
French National Centre for Scientific Research
Dechaud, Corentin
0000-0002-9790-3438
French National Centre for Scientific Research
Arbore, Roberto
French National Centre for Scientific Research
Data from: Impact of male trait exaggeration on sex-biased gene expression
and genome architecture in a water strider
Dryad
dataset
2020
FOS: Biological sciences
European Research Council
https://ror.org/0472cxd90
616346
2021-03-29T00:00:00Z
2021-03-29T00:00:00Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.10.901322
20898808 bytes
7
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Background: Exaggerated secondary sexual traits are widespread in nature
and often evolve under strong directional sexual selection. Although
heavily studied from both theoretical and empirical viewpoints, we have
little understanding of how sexual selection influences sex-biased gene
regulation during the development of exaggerated secondary sexual
phenotypes, and how these changes are reflected in genomic architecture.
This is primarily due to the limited availability of representative
genomes and associated tissue- and sex-transcriptomes to study the
development of these traits. Here we present the genome and developmental
transcriptomes, focused on the legs, of the water strider Microvelia
longipes, a species where males exhibit strikingly long third legs
compared to females, which they use as weapons. Results: We generated a
high-quality genome assembly with 90% of the sequence captured in 13
scaffolds. The most exaggerated legs in males were particularly enriched
in both sex-biased and leg-biased genes, indicating a specific signature
of gene expression in association with trait exaggeration. We also found
that male-biased genes showed patterns of fast evolution compared to
non-biased and female-biased genes, indicative of directional or relaxed
purifying selection. By contrast to male-biased genes, female-biased genes
that are expressed in the third legs, but not the other legs, are
over-represented in the X chromosome compared to the autosomes. An
enrichment analysis for sex-biased genes along the chromosomes revealed
also that they arrange in large genomic regions or in small clusters of
two to four consecutive genes. The number and expression of these enriched
regions were often associated with the exaggerated legs of males,
suggesting a pattern of common regulation through genomic proximity in
association with trait exaggeration. Conclusion: Our findings indicate how
directional sexual selection may drive sex-biased gene expression and
genome architecture along the path to trait exaggeration and sexual
dimorphism.
The methods are described in the article BMCB-D-20-00460.