Abstract
Separate sexes and sex-biased gene expression have repeatedly evolved in animals and plants, but the underlying changes in gene expression remain unknown. Here, we studied a pair of plant species, one in which separate sexes and sex chromosomes evolved recently and one which maintained hermaphrodite flowers resembling the ancestral state, to reconstruct expression changes associated with the evolution of dioecy. We found that sex-biased gene expression has evolved in autosomal and sex-linked genes in the dioecious species. Most expression changes relative to hermaphrodite flowers occurred in females rather than males, with higher and lower expression in females leading to female-biased and male-biased expression, respectively. Expression changes were more common in genes located on the sex chromosomes than the autosomes and led to feminization of the X chromosome and masculinization of the Y chromosome. Our results support a scenario in which sex-biased gene expression evolved during the evolution of dioecy to resolve intralocus sexual conflicts over the allocation of resources.
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Acknowledgements
This work was funded through SNF projects 141260 and 160123 to A.W. and the French National Research Agency ANR-11-BSV7-013-03 to G.A.B.M. We thank C. Michel for laboratory support, S. Zoller from the ETH Zurich Genetic Diversity Centre (GDC) for assembling the reference transcriptome and members of the Plant Ecological Genetics group for insightful discussions. We thank M.C. Fischer for providing pictures of S. latifolia and M. Frei for taking care of all plants. Data produced and analysed in this paper were generated in collaboration with the GDC.
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Designed the experiments and formulated predictions: N.Z., A.W., G.A.B.M., D.C.; performed the experiments: N.Z.; analysed the data: N.Z., R.T., A.M.; wrote the manuscript: N.Z., A.W., D.C., G.A.B.M., R.T., A.M.
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Zemp, N., Tavares, R., Muyle, A. et al. Evolution of sex-biased gene expression in a dioecious plant. Nature Plants 2, 16168 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2016.168
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2016.168
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