A novel sperm-delivered toxin causes late-stage embryo lethality and transmission ratio distortion in C. elegans.

ABSTRACT: The evolutionary fate of an allele ordinarily depends on its contribution to host fitness. Occasionally, however, genetic elements arise that are able to gain a transmission advantage while simultaneously imposing a fitness cost on their hosts. We previously discovered one such element in C. elegans that gains a transmission advantage through a combination of paternal-effect killing and zygotic self-rescue. Here we demonstrate that this element is composed of a sperm-delivered toxin, peel-1, and an embryo-expressed antidote, zeel-1. peel-1 and zeel-1 are located adjacent to one another in the genome and co-occur in an insertion/deletion polymorphism. peel-1 encodes a novel four-pass transmembrane protein that is expressed in sperm and delivered to the embryo via specialized, sperm-specific

SUBMITTER: Seidel HS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3144186 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature