Abstract
In the Mexican axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum), sex is determined by a single Mendelian factor, yet its sex chromosomes do not exhibit morphological differentiation typical of many vertebrate taxa that possess a single sex-determining locus. As sex chromosomes are theorized to differentiate rapidly, species with undifferentiated sex chromosomes provide the opportunity to reconstruct early events in sex chromosome evolution. Whole genome sequencing of 48 salamanders, targeted chromosome sequencing and in situ hybridization were used to identify the homomorphic sex chromosome that carries an A. mexicanum sex-determining factor and sequences that are present only on the W chromosome. Altogether, these sequences cover ~300 kb of validated female-specific (W chromosome) sequence, representing ~1/100,000th of the 32 Gb genome. Notably, a recent duplication of ATRX, a gene associated with mammalian sex-determining pathways, is one of few functional (non-repetitive) genes identified among these W-specific sequences. This duplicated gene (ATRW) was used to develop highly predictive markers for diagnosing sex and represents a strong candidate for a recently-acquired sex determining locus (or sexually antagonistic gene) in A. mexicanum.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-14-2018
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-36209-2
Funding Information
This study was supported by the National Institutes of Health through their support of this project (R24OD010435), the Ambystoma Genetic Stock Center (P40OD019794), (R01GM104123), and by the Army Research Office (W911NF1110475).
Related Content
Sequence data (48 sequenced axolotl genomes) are deposited at the NCBI short read archives (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra) under study number PRJNA478224.
Supplementary information accompanies this paper at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-36209-2.
Repository Citation
Keinath, Melissa C.; Timoshevskaya, Nataliya Y.; Timoshevskiy, Vladimir A.; Voss, S. Randal; and Smith, Jeramiah J., "Miniscule Differences Between Sex Chromosomes in the Giant Genome of a Salamander" (2018). Biology Faculty Publications. 162.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/biology_facpub/162
Supplementary Information
41598_2018_36209_MOESM2_ESM.xlsx (132 kB)
Supplementary Dataset 1
41598_2018_36209_MOESM3_ESM.xlsx (50 kB)
Supplementary Dataset 2
41598_2018_36209_MOESM4_ESM.xlsx (17 kB)
Supplementary Dataset 3
Included in
Biology Commons, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons, Genetics and Genomics Commons
Notes/Citation Information
Published in Scientific Reports, v. 8, article no. 17882, p. 1-14.
© The Author(s) 2018
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.