Noncanonical function of the Sexlethal gene controls the protogyny phenotype in Drosophila melanogaster

Ki-Hyeon Seong,Siu Kang

doi:10.1038/s41598-022-05147-5

Abstract

Drosophila melanogaster females eclose on average 4 h faster than males owing to sexual differences in the pupal period, referred to as the protogyny phenotype. Here, to elucidate the mechanism underlying the protogyny phenotype, we used our newly developed Drosophila Individual Activity Monitoring and Detecting System (DIAMonDS) that detects the precise timing of both pupariation and eclosion in individual flies. Although sex transformation induced by tra-2, tra alteration, or msl-2 knockdown-mediated disruption of dosage compensation showed no effect on the protogyny phenotype, stage-specific whole-body knockdown and mutation of the Drosophila master sex switch gene, Sxl, was found to disrupt the protogyny phenotype. Thus, Sxl establishes the protogyny phenotype through a noncanonical pathway in D. melanogaster.

Highlights

Drosophila melanogaster females eclose on average 4 h faster than males owing to sexual differences in the pupal period, referred to as the protogyny phenotype
Since sex chromosome dosage compensation is differentially regulated by sex, and the male-specific lethal complex plays a key role in the dosage compensation machinery in Drosophila[19,20], we investigated the possibility that the dosage compensation pathway contributes to the protogyny phenotype by knocking down the expression of msl-2
These results indicated that the phenotypic stability of the protogyny in D. melanogaster remains robust under environmental perturbation

Summary

Introduction

Drosophila melanogaster females eclose on average 4 h faster than males owing to sexual differences in the pupal period, referred to as the protogyny phenotype. To elucidate the mechanism underlying the protogyny phenotype, we used our newly developed Drosophila Individual Activity Monitoring and Detecting System (DIAMonDS) that detects the precise timing of both pupariation and eclosion in individual flies. To understand the evolutionary significance of the sex bias in the sexual maturation time point, it is important to elucidate the molecular mechanism underlying the protogyny and protandry phenotypes. These molecular aspects remain unclear, mainly owing to difficulties in precisely measuring the timing of maturation of individuals simultaneously and for a long period with the currently available techniques. Because previous reports corroborate this result, the 4-h difference in adult emergence between sex seems to reflect intrinsic developmental time to eclosion without the effect of light conditions[12]

Methods

Results

Conclusion