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MBE Advance Access published online on September 24, 2007
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msm208
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© The Author 2007. 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 Article

Rapid Evolution of Female-Biased, But Not Male-Biased, Genes Expressed in Avian the Brain

Judith E. Mank, Lina Hultin-Rosenberg, Erik Axelsson and Hans Ellegren

Department of Evolutionary Biology, Evolutionary Biology Centre, Uppsala University, Norbyvägen 18D, SE-752 36 Uppsala, Sweden

Correspondence: Prof. Hans Ellegren (email: Hans.Ellegren{at}ebc.uu.se, fax: +46-18-4716310, phone: +46-18-4716460)

Received for publication August 15, 2007. Revision received September 10, 2007. Accepted for publication September 12, 2007.

The powerful pressures of sexual and natural selection associated with species recognition and reproduction are thought to manifest in a faster rate of evolution in sex-biased genes, an effect that has been documented particularly for male-biased genes expressed in the reproductive tract. However, little is known about the rate of evolution for genes involved in sexually dimorphic behaviors, which often form the neurological basis of intra-sexual competition and mate choice. We used microarray data, designed to uncover sex-biased expression patterns in embryonic chicken brain, in conjunction with data on the rate of sequence evolution for > 4000 coding regions aligned between chicken and zebra finch, in order to study the role of selection in governing the molecular evolution for sex-biased and unbiased genes. Surprisingly, we found that female-biased genes, defined across a range of cutoff values, show a higher rate of functional evolution than both male-biased and unbiased genes. Autosomal male-biased genes evolve at a similar rate as unbiased genes. Sex-specific genomic properties, such as heterogeneity in genomic distribution and GC content, and codon usage bias for sex-biased classes fail to explain this surprising result, suggesting that selective pressures may be acting differently on the male and female brain.

Key Words: Gene expression • sexual selection • sex-bias • dN/dS • chicken


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