Department of Agricultural and Environmental Biology, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8657, Japan.
Department of Computational Biology and Medical Sciences, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Chiba 277-8561, Japan.
Biol Lett. 2022 Sep;18(9):20220116. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2022.0116. Epub 2022 Sep 7.
The evolution of dosage compensation produces similar expression of sex-linked and autosomal genes in the heterogametic sex. The silkworm (), a lepidopteran insect, has a female heterogametic WZ sex determination system. A Z-linked gene, (), is the primary determinant of maleness and dosage compensation in . However, it remains unknown whether one of the two Z chromosomes is inactivated or both Z chromosomes are suppressed in males. Hence, we performed transcriptome analysis using hybrids between two strains and analysed allele-specific expression to distinguish these alternatives. Our analysis revealed that genes on both the maternal and paternal Z chromosomes are transcriptionally upregulated in knocked down males. We therefore conclude that both Z chromosomes are transcriptionally downregulated in males, similar to the system in .
剂量补偿进化导致异型性别中性连锁基因和常染色体基因的相似表达。家蚕（）是鳞翅目昆虫，具有雌性异配性 WZ 性别决定系统。Z 连锁基因（）是家蚕雄性决定和剂量补偿的主要决定因素。然而，在雄性家蚕中，两个 Z 染色体中的一个是否失活或两个 Z 染色体都被抑制仍不清楚。因此，我们使用两个家蚕品系的杂种进行了转录组分析，并分析了等位基因特异性表达以区分这些可能性。我们的分析表明，在敲低雄性中，母本和父本 Z 染色体上的基因转录均上调。因此，我们得出结论，在雄性家蚕中，两个 Z 染色体的转录均下调，类似于系统。
