Functional similarity and molecular divergence of a novel reproductive transcriptome in two male-pregnant Syngnathus pipefish species.

ABSTRACT: Evolutionary studies have revealed that reproductive proteins in animals and plants often evolve more rapidly than the genome-wide average. The causes of this pattern, which may include relaxed purifying selection, sexual selection, sexual conflict, pathogen resistance, reinforcement, or gene duplication, remain elusive. Investigative expansions to additional taxa and reproductive tissues have the potential to shed new light on this unresolved problem. Here, we embark on such an expansion, in a comparison of the brood-pouch transcriptome between two male-pregnant species of the pipefish genus Syngnathus. Male brooding tissues in syngnathid fishes represent a novel, nonurogenital reproductive trait, heretofore mostly uncharacterized from a molecular perspective. We leveraged next-generation

SUBMITTER: Small CM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3853555 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature