Evidence of the accumulation of allele-specific non-synonymous substitutions in the young region of recombination suppression within the mating-type chromosomes of Neurospora tetrasperma.

ABSTRACT: Currently, little is known about the origin and early evolution of sex chromosomes. This is largely due to the fact that ancient non-recombining sex chromosomes are highly degenerated, and thus provide little information about the early genomic events in their evolution. The Neurospora tetrasperma mating-type (mat) chromosomes contain a young (<6 Mya) and large region (>6.6 Mb) of suppressed recombination, thereby providing a model system to study early stages of sex chromosome evolution. Here, we examined alleles of 207 genes located on the N. tetrasperma mat a and mat A chromosomes to test for signs of genomic alterations at the protein level in the young region of recombination suppression. We report that the N. tetrasperma mat a and mat A chromosomes have each independently accumulated

SUBMITTER: Whittle CA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3182494 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature