The genomes of a monogenic fly: views of primitive sex chromosomes.
Academic Article
Overview
Research
Identity
Additional Document Info
Other
View All
Overview
abstract
The production of male and female offspring is often determined by the presence of specific sex chromosomes which control sex-specific expression, and sex chromosomes evolve through reduced recombination and specialized gene content. Here we present the genomes of Chrysomya rufifacies, a monogenic blow fly (females produce female or male offspring, exclusively) by separately sequencing and assembling each type of female and the male. The genomes (>25X coverage) do not appear to have any sex-linked Muller F elements (typical for many Diptera) and exhibit little differentiation between groups supporting the morphological assessments of C. rufifacies homomorphic chromosomes. Males in this species are associated with a unimodal coverage distribution while females exhibit bimodal coverage distributions, suggesting a potential difference in genomic architecture. The presence of the individual-sex draft genomes herein provides new clues regarding the origination and evolution of the diverse sex-determining mechanisms observed within Diptera. Additional genomic analysis of sex chromosomes and sex-determining genes of other blow flies will allow a refined evolutionary understanding of how flies with a typical X/Y heterogametic amphogeny (male and female offspring in similar ratios) sex determination systems evolved into one with a dominant factor that results in single sex progeny in a chromosomally monomorphic system.
