Project description:Sex determination is still poorly understood in birds and no key determinants have so far been identified. In contrast to most other species, dosage compensation of bird sex chromosomal genes appears rather ineffective. By comparing microarrays of microdissected primitive streak from single chicken embryos, we identified a large number of genes differentially expressed between male and female embryos at a very early stage (Hamburger and Hamilton stage 4), long before any sexual differentiation occurs. Most of these genes are located on the Z chromosome, which indicates that dosage compensation is ineffective in early chicken embryos. Gene ontology analyses using an enhanced annotation tool for Affymetrix probesets of the chicken genome shows that among the male-biased genes found on the Z chromosome, more than 20 genes have a role in sex differentiation. Experiment Overall Design: Primitive streak tissues were dissected out of individual Hamburger and Hamilton (HH) stage 4 chicken embryos and extracted for total RNA. Total RNA was amplified 2-cycles, biotin-labeled and hybridized to Affymetrix chicken GeneChip. Gene expression profiles of female and male samples were analyzed for sex-dimorphic expression.
Project description:Sex determination is still poorly understood in birds and no key determinants have so far been identified. In contrast to most other species, dosage compensation of bird sex chromosomal genes appears rather ineffective. By comparing microarrays of microdissected primitive streak from single chicken embryos, we identified a large number of genes differentially expressed between male and female embryos at a very early stage (Hamburger and Hamilton stage 4), long before any sexual differentiation occurs. Most of these genes are located on the Z chromosome, which indicates that dosage compensation is ineffective in early chicken embryos. Gene ontology analyses using an enhanced annotation tool for Affymetrix probesets of the chicken genome shows that among the male-biased genes found on the Z chromosome, more than 20 genes have a role in sex differentiation.
Project description:The contrasting dose of sex chromosomes in males and females potentially introduces a large-scale imbalance in levels of gene expression between sexes. In many organisms dosage compensation has thus evolved to equalize sex-linked gene expression in males and females1,2, in mammals achieved by X chromosome inactivation and in flies and worms by up- or down-regulation of X-linked expression, respectively. Another form of dosage compensation ensures that expression levels on the X chromosome and on autosomes are balanced3,4. While otherwise widespread in systems with heteromorphic sex chromosomes, the case of dosage compensation in birds (males ZZ, females ZW) remains an unsolved enigma5,6. Here we use a microarray approach to show that male day 18 chicken embryos generally express higher levels of Z-linked genes than female birds, both in soma and in gonads. The distribution of male-to-female fold-change values for Z chromosome genes is wide and has a mean of 1.4-1.6, which is consistent with absence of dosage compensation and sex-specific feedback regulation of gene expression at individual loci2. Intriguingly, without global dosage compensation, female chicken has significantly lower expression levels of Z-linked compared to autosomal genes, which is not the case in male birds. The pronounced sex difference in gene expression is likely to contribute to sexual dimorphism among birds, and potentially has implication to avian sex determination. Keywords: dosage compensation, sex-biased gene expression, soma and gonad
Project description:Gene dosage imbalance of heteromorphic sex chromosomes (XY or ZW) exists between the sexes, and with the autosomes. Mammalian X chromosome inactivation was long thought to imply a critical need for dosage compensation in vertebrates. However, mRNA abundance measurements that demonstrated sex chromosome transcripts are neither balanced between the sexes or with autosomes in monotreme mammals or birds brought sex chromosome dosage compensation into question. This study examines transcriptomic and proteomic levels of dosage compensation in platypus and chicken compared to mouse, a model eutherian species. We analyzed mRNA and protein levels in heart and liver tissues of chicken, mouse and platypus.
Project description:Sexual dimorphism depends on sex-biased gene expression, but the contributions of microRNAs (miRNAs) have not been globally assessed. We therefore produced an extensive small RNA sequencing dataset to analyse male and female miRNA expression profiles in mouse, opossum and chicken. Our analyses uncovered numerous cases of somatic sex-biased miRNA expression, especially in the mouse heart and liver. Sex-biased expression is explained by miRNA-specific regulation, including sex-biased chromatin accessibility at promoters, rather than piggybacking of intronic miRNAs on sex-biased protein-coding genes. In mouse, but not opossum and chicken, sex bias is coordinated across tissues such that autosomal testis-biased miRNAs tend to be somatically male-biased, whereas autosomal ovary-biased miRNAs are female-biased, possibly due to broad hormonal control. In chicken, which has a Z/W sex chromosome system, expression output of genes on the Z chromosome is expected to be male-biased, since there is no global dosage compensation mechanism that restores expression in ZW females after almost all genes on the W chromosome decayed. Nevertheless, we found that the dominant liver miRNA, miR-122-5p, is Z-linked but expressed in an unbiased manner, due to the unusual retention of a W-linked copy. Another Z-linked miRNA, the male-biased miR-2954-3p, shows conserved preference for dosage-sensitive genes on the Z chromosome, based on computational and experimental data from chicken and zebra finch, and acts to equalise male-to-female expression ratios of its targets. Unexpectedly, our findings thus establish miRNA regulation as a novel gene-specific dosage compensation mechanism.
Project description:Sex-chromosome dosage represents a challenge for heterogametic species to maintain correct proportion of gene products across chromosomes in each sex. While therian mammals (XX/XY system) achieve near-perfect balance of X-chromosome mRNAs through X-upregulation and X-inactivation, birds (ZW/ZZ system) have been found to lack efficient compensation at RNA level, challenging the necessity of resolving major gene-dosage discrepancies in avian cells. Through allele-resolved multiome analyses, we comprehensively examined dosage compensation in female (ZW), male (ZZ), and rare intersex (ZZW) chicken. Remarkably, this revealed that females exhibit upregulation of their single Z through increased transcriptional burst frequency similar to mammalian X-upregulation, and that Z-protein levels are further balanced via enhanced translation efficiency in females. Global analyses of transcriptional kinetics elements in birds demonstrate remarkable conservation of the genomic encoding of burst kinetics between mammals and birds. Our study uncovers new mechanisms for achieving sex-chromosome dosage compensation and highlights the importance of gene-dosage balance across diverse species.
Project description:The essential process of dosage compensation, which corrects for the imbalance in X-linked gene expression between XX females and XY males, represents a key model for how genes are targeted for coordinated regulation. However, the mechanism by which dosage compensation complexes identify the X-chromosome during early development remained unknown because of the difficulty of sexing embryos prior to zygotic transcription. We used meiotic drive to sex Drosophila embryos prior to zygotic transcription and ChIP-seq to measure dynamics of dosage compensation factor targeting. The Drosophila Male-Specific Lethal dosage compensation complex (MSLc) requires the ubiquitous zinc-finger protein Chromatin-Linked Adaptor for MSL Proteins (CLAMP) to identify the X-chromosome. We observe a multi-stage process in which MSLc first identifies CLAMP binding sites throughout the genome followed by concentration at the strongest X-linked MSLc sites. We provide insight into the dynamic mechanism by which a large transcription complex identifies its binding sites during early development.
Project description:Malaria-transmitting mosquitoes are extremely sexually dimorphic in their anatomy and behaviour. Sex-specific gene expression in Anopheles gambiae is well-studied in adult stages, but its onset during embryogenesis, apart from sex-determination factors like Yob, remains largely unknown. Here, we report a comprehensive single-embryo transcriptome atlas of A. gambiae males and females to understand the earliest stages of establishing the sex-specific expression networks. Our dataset reveals embryonic RNA isoform diversity including a global shift towards distal alternative polyadenylation (APA) events sites during the maternal-to-zygotic genome transition. Sex-biased gene expression and alternative splicing are limited during embryogenesis, with most sex-specific patterns emerging post-embryonically. X chromosome dosage compensation is established shortly after zygotic genome activation concomitant with direct binding of the master regulator protein SOA to X-linked promoters. Unlike the dosage compensation regulators in Drosophila or mammals, SOA operates in a one-step fashion, directly binding CA-rich promoter motifs without prioritizing certain gene groups over others. We propose that the Anopheles dosage compensation system represents an evolutionary endpoint of a gene-by-gene regulatory mechanism that evolved to a chromosome-wide scale.
Project description:Malaria-transmitting mosquitoes are extremely sexually dimorphic in their anatomy and behaviour. Sex-specific gene expression in Anopheles gambiae is well-studied in adult stages, but its onset during embryogenesis, apart from sex-determination factors like Yob, remains largely unknown. Here, we report a comprehensive single-embryo transcriptome atlas of A. gambiae males and females to understand the earliest stages of establishing the sex-specific expression networks. Our dataset reveals embryonic RNA isoform diversity including a global shift towards distal alternative polyadenylation (APA) events sites during the maternal-to-zygotic genome transition. Sex-biased gene expression and alternative splicing are limited during embryogenesis, with most sex-specific patterns emerging post-embryonically. X chromosome dosage compensation is established shortly after zygotic genome activation concomitant with direct binding of the master regulator protein SOA to X-linked promoters. Unlike the dosage compensation regulators in Drosophila or mammals, SOA operates in a one-step fashion, directly binding CA-rich promoter motifs without prioritizing certain gene groups over others. We propose that the Anopheles dosage compensation system represents an evolutionary endpoint of a gene-by-gene regulatory mechanism that evolved to a chromosome-wide scale.