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MBE Advance Access published online on December 1, 2007
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msm265
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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

Adaptive Evolution of Proteins Secreted During Sperm Maturation: An Analysis of the Mouse Epididymal Transcriptome

Matthew D. Dean1, Jeffrey M. Good and Michael W. Nachman

University of Arizona, 333 Biosciences West, 1041 East Lowell Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85721

1 Corresponding author: email: mattdean{at}email.arizona.edu; office: 520-626-4747; fax: 520-626-9190

Received for publication August 13, 2007. Revision received November 4, 2007. Accepted for publication November 9, 2007.

A common pattern observed in molecular evolution is that reproductive genes tend to evolve rapidly. However, most previous studies documenting this rapid evolution are based on genes expressed in just a few male reproductive organs. In mammals, sperm become motile and capable of fertilization only after leaving the testis, during their transit through the epididymis. Thus, genes expressed in the epididymis are expected to play important roles in male fertility. Here we perform evolutionary genetic analyses on the epididymal transcriptome of mice. Overall, epididymis-expressed genes show evidence of strong evolutionary constraint, a finding that contrasts with most previous analyses of genes expressed in other male reproductive organs. However, a subset of epididymis-specialized, secreted genes showed several signatures of adaptive evolution, including an increased rate of nonsynonymous evolution. Furthermore, this subset of genes was overrepresented on the X chromosome. Immunity and protein modification functions were significantly overrepresented among epididymis-specialized, secreted genes. These analyses identified a group of genes likely to be important in male reproductive success.

Key Words: reproduction • epididymis • evolution • selection


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