A gene's-eye view of sexual antagonism.

ABSTRACT: Females and males may face different selection pressures. Accordingly, alleles that confer a benefit for one sex often incur a cost for the other. Classic evolutionary theory holds that the X chromosome, whose sex-biased transmission sees it spending more time in females, should value females more than males, whereas autosomes, whose transmission is unbiased, should value both sexes equally. However, recent mathematical and empirical studies indicate that male-beneficial alleles may be more favoured by the X chromosome than by autosomes. Here we develop a gene's-eye-view approach that reconciles the classic view with these recent discordant results, by separating a gene's valuation of female versus male fitness from its ability to induce fitness effects in either sex. We use this framework

SUBMITTER: Hitchcock TJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7575522 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature