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MBE Advance Access originally published online on July 8, 2009
Molecular Biology and Evolution 2009 26(10):2343-2351; doi:10.1093/molbev/msp141
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Research Articles

Slcyt, a Newly Identified Sex-Linked Gene, Has Recently Moved onto the X Chromosome in Silene latifolia (Caryophyllaceae)

Vera B. Kaiser, Roberta Bergero and Deborah Charlesworth

Institute of Evolutionary Biology, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

E-mail: v.b.kaiser{at}ed.ac.uk.

Accepted for publication July 2, 2009.

The sex chromosomes of the plant species Silene latifolia (white campion) are very young (only 5–10 My old), and all 11 X-linked genes so far described have Y-linked homologues. Theory predicts that X chromosomes should accumulate a nonrandom set of genes. However, little is known about the importance of gene movements between the X and the autosomes in plants, or in any very young sex chromosome system. Here, we isolate from cDNA a new gene, Slcyt, on the S. latifolia X, which encodes a cytochrome B protein. We genetically mapped SlCyt and found that it is located ~1 cM from the pseudoautosomal region. Genes in this region of the X chromosome have low divergence values from their homologous Y-linked genes, indicating that the X only recently stopped recombining with the Y. Genetic mapping in Silene vulgaris suggests that Slcyt originally belonged to a different linkage group from that of the other S. latifolia X-linked genes. Silene latifolia has no Y-linked homologue of Slcyt, and also no autosomal paralogues seem to exist. Slcyt moved from an autosome to the X very recently, as the Cyt gene is also X linked in Silene dioica, the sister species to S. latifolia, but is probably autosomal in Silene diclinis, implying that a translocation to the X probably occurred after the split between S. diclinis and S. latifolia/S. dioica. Diversity at Slcyt is extremely low ({pi}syn = 0.16%), and we find an excess of high frequency–derived variants and a negative Tajima's D, suggesting that the translocation was driven by selection.

Key Words: Silene latifolia • sex chromosomes • gene movement

Hideki Innan, Associate Editor


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