Widespread transcriptional autosomal dosage compensation in Drosophila correlates with gene expression level.

ABSTRACT: Little is known about dosage compensation in autosomal genes. Transcription-level compensation of deletions and other loss-of-function mutations may be a mechanism of dominance of wild-type alleles, a ubiquitous phenomenon whose nature has been a subject of a long debate. We measured gene expression in two isogenic Drosophila lines heterozygous for long deletions and compared our results with previously published gene expression data in a line heterozygous for a long duplication. We find that a majority of genes are at least partially compensated at transcription, both for (1/2)-fold dosage (in heterozygotes for deletions) and for 1.5-fold dosage (in heterozygotes for a duplication). The degree of compensation does not vary among functional classes of genes. Compensation for deletions is s

SUBMITTER: McAnally AA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2839349 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature