Intraspecific Transcriptome Variation and Sex-Biased Expression in Anopheles arabiensis
Loading...
Date
2021-08-22
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Genome Biol. Evol.
Abstract
The magnitude and functional patterns of intraspecific transcriptional variation in the anophelines, including those of sex-biased
genes underlying sex-specific traits relevant for malaria transmission, remain understudied. As a result, how changes in expression
levels drive adaptation in these species is poorly understood. We sequenced the female, male, and larval transcriptomes of three
populations of Anopheles arabiensis from Burkina Faso. One-third of the genes were differentially expressed between populations,
often involving insecticide resistance-related genes in a sample type-specific manner, and with the females showing the largest
number of differentially expressed genes. At the genomic level, the X chromosome appears depleted of differentially expressed
genes compared with the autosomes, chromosomes harboring in versions do not exhibit evidence for enrichment of such genes, and
genes that are top contributors to functional enrichment patterns of population differentiation tend to be clustered in the genome.
Further, the magnitude of variation for the sex expression ratio across populations did not substantially differ between male- and
female-biased genes, except for some populations in which male-limited expressed genes showed more variation than their female
counterparts. In fact, female-biased genes exhibited a larger level of inter population variation than male-biased genes, both when
assayed in males and females. Beyond uncovering the extensive adaptive potential of transcriptional variation in An. Arabiensis, our
findings suggest that the evolutionary rate of changes in expression levels on the X chromosome exceeds that on the autosomes,
while pointing to female-biased genes as the most variable component of the An. Arabiensis transcriptome
Description
Keywords
transcriptome variation, functional diversification, sex-biased gene expression, faster-X effect, Anopheles arabiensis, Bryan D. Clifton, Marco Pombi, Burkina Faso, Université Nazi Boni, CEA-ITECH_MTV, ACE: Bio-technological Innovation for the Elimination of Vector- Borne Diseases