Altered expression of cell adhesion genes and hybrid male sterility between subspecies of Drosophila pseudoobscura.

Abstract

Drosophila pseudoobscura pseudoobscura and Drosophila pseudoobscura bogotana are two closely related subspecies with incomplete reproductive isolation. A genome-wide comparison of expression in hybrids relative to parental subspecies has been previously used to identify genes with significant changes in expression uniquely associated with the sterile condition. The misexpression (i.e., gene expression beyond levels found in parentals) of such genes could be directly linked to the onset of sterility or could alternatively be caused by incompatibilities in a hybrid genome without a direct link to sterility. Cell adhesion was previously found to be one of the largest gene ontologies with changes in expression linked to sterility. Here we used gene expression assays in fertile backcross male progeny, along with introgression progeny in which we swap a major hybrid male sterility (HMS) allele, to generate fertile and sterile males genotypically similar to F1 sterile hybrids. We identify a cell adhesion gene (GA10921) whose change in expression is directly linked to sterility and modulated by a previously characterized HMS protein. GA10921 adds to our rather limited knowledge of changes in gene expression associated with HMS, and to the identification of gene interacting partners linked to HMS.