Title:The evolution of dosage compensation in Drosophila melanogaster
Speaker:Zhen-Xia Chen (陈振夏)
Laboratory of Cellular and Developmental Biology,
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases,
National Institutes of Health, USA
Time:10-11am, Monday, Dec 1st, 2014
Location:Room 311, Wang Ke-Zhen Building (王克桢楼, 原太平洋楼), Peking University

 

Abstract：X chromosome dosage compensation is required for male viability. We take Drosophila melanogaster, which achieved dosage compensation by the action of a well-studied complex of proteins and non-coding RNAs, as a model system to study the evolution of dosage compensation. It is assumed that dosage compensation is 2-fold, but the baseline value for dosage compensation, which takes events such as gene regulation into account, is unknown. By using a series of deficiencies on the X
and autosomes, along with mutations in the sex determination gene tra2 to minimize confounding sex-biased expression, we have carefully measured the X chromosome response to gene dose by RNASeq. We observe similar modest dosage compensation for both X chromosome and autosome genes. These data suggest that the X chromosome is neither inherently more robust nor sensitive to dosage change, and shed light on the evolution of dosage compensation.