Aline Muyle, Niklaus Zemp, Cecile Fruchard, Radim Cegan, Jan Vrana, Clothilde Deschamps, Raquel Tavares, Franck Picard, Roman Hobza, Alex Widmer, Gabriel MaraisPlease use the format "First name initials family name" as in "Marie S. Curie, Niels H. D. Bohr, Albert Einstein, John R. R. Tolkien, Donna T. Strickland"
<p>During the evolution of sex chromosomes, the Y degenerates and its expression gets reduced relative to the X and autosomes. Various dosage compensation mechanisms that recover ancestral expression levels in males have been described in animals. However, the early steps in the evolution of dosage compensation remain unknown, and dosage compensation outside of the animal kingdom is poorly understood. Here, we studied the evolutionarily young XY system of the plant Silene latifolia. We show that dosage compensation is achieved in this plant by a genomic imprinting mechanism where the maternal X chromosome is upregulated in both males and females. This is the first time such a situation is observed in any organism. It could be non- optimal for females and may reflect an early stage of dosage compensation evolution, which strikingly resemble the first stage of the path proposed by Ohno for the evolution of X inactivation in mammals.</p>
sex chromosomes, Y degeneration, X chromosome dosage compensation, Silene latifolia, genomic imprinting
Bioinformatics & Computational Biology, Expression Studies, Genome Evolution, Molecular Evolution, Reproduction and Sex