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Peona, Valentina, Palacios-Gimenez, Octavio M., Blommaert, Julie, Liu, Jing, Haryoko, Tri, Jønsson, Knud A., Irestedt, Martin, Zhou, Qi, Jern, Patric and Suh, Alexander 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8979-9992
(2021)
The avian W chromosome is a refugium for endogenous retroviruses with likely effects on female-biased mutational load and genetic incompatibilities.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 376 (1833).
ISSN 0962-8436
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Abstract
It is a broadly observed pattern that the non-recombining regions of sex-limited chromosomes (Y and W) accumulate more repeats than the rest of the genome, even in species like birds with a low genome-wide repeat content. Here, we show that in birds with highly heteromorphic sex chromosomes, the W chromosome has a transposable element (TE) density of greater than 55% compared to the genome-wide density of less than 10%, and contains over half of all full-length (thus potentially active) endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) of the entire genome. Using RNA-seq and protein mass spectrometry data, we were able to detect signatures of female-specific ERV expression. We hypothesize that the avian W chromosome acts as a refugium for active ERVs, probably leading to female-biased mutational load that may influence female physiology similar to the ‘toxic-Y’ effect in Drosophila males. Furthermore, Haldane's rule predicts that the heterogametic sex has reduced fertility in hybrids. We propose that the excess of W-linked active ERVs over the rest of the genome may be an additional explanatory variable for Haldane's rule, with consequences for genetic incompatibilities between species through TE/repressor mismatches in hybrids. Together, our results suggest that the sequence content of female-specific W chromosomes can have effects far beyond sex determination and gene dosage.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | haldane's rule,w chromosome,endogenous retrovirus,sex chromosome,transcriptome,transposable element,biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology(all),agricultural and biological sciences(all) ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1300 |
| Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Science > School of Biological Sciences |
| Related URLs: | |
| Depositing User: | LivePure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 30 Jul 2021 00:10 |
| Last Modified: | 25 Sep 2024 15:45 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/80904 |
| DOI: | 10.1098/rstb.2020.0186 |
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