Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA.
PLoS One. 2013;8(2):e55915. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0055915. Epub 2013 Feb 7.
An appreciable fraction of the Drosophila melanogaster genome is dedicated to male fertility. One approach to characterizing this subset of the genome is through the study of male-sterile mutations. We studied the relation between vital and male-fertility genes in three large autosomal regions that were saturated for lethal and male-sterile mutations. The majority of male-sterile mutations affect genes that are exclusively expressed in males. These genes are required only for male fertility, and several mutant alleles of each such gene were encountered. A few male-sterile mutations were alleles of vital genes that are expressed in both males and females. About one-fifth of the genes in Drosophila melanogaster show male-specific expression in adults. Although some earlier studies found a paucity of genes on the X chromosome showing male-biased expression, we did not find any significant differences between the X chromosome and the autosomes either in the relative frequencies of mutations to male sterility or in the frequencies of genes with male-specific expression in adults. Our results suggest that as much as 25% of the Drosophila genome may be dedicated to male fertility.
果蝇的基因组中有相当一部分专门用于雄性的生育能力。研究基因组这一部分的一种方法是研究雄性不育突变。我们研究了三个常染色体大片段中与生命和雄性不育基因之间的关系，这些片段的致死和雄性不育突变已饱和。大多数雄性不育突变影响仅在雄性中表达的基因。这些基因仅对雄性生育能力是必需的，并且遇到了每个这样的基因的几个突变等位基因。少数雄性不育突变是在雄性和雌性中都表达的生命基因的等位基因。在成体中，果蝇约有五分之一的基因表现出雄性特异性表达。尽管一些早期的研究发现 X 染色体上显示雄性偏性表达的基因很少，但我们在雄性不育突变的相对频率或在成年雄性特异性表达的基因频率方面，都没有发现 X 染色体和常染色体之间有任何显著差异。我们的结果表明，果蝇基因组的多达 25％可能专门用于雄性生育能力。
