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MBE Advance Access published online on January 29, 2008
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msn020
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© The Author 2008. 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

Letter

Evidence for Male-Driven Evolution in Drosophila

Doris Bachtrog

Division of Biological Sciences, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, MC 0116, La Jolla, CA 92093 email: dbachtrog{at}ucsd.edu, phone: 858-354-5628, fax: 858-534-7108

Received for publication October 24, 2007. Revision received December 12, 2007. Accepted for publication January 21, 2008.

In several vertebrate taxa studied to date, mutation rates are higher in males than females (male-driven evolution). The male-to-female mutation rate ({alpha}) can be estimated by contrasting DNA divergence data at X-linked, Y-linked and autosomal loci. Previous studies in Drosophila, comparing X-linked and autosomal divergence, have found no evidence for male-driven evolution in this genus. Here, I compare levels of nucleotide divergence between homologous X- and Y-linked loci in D. miranda. Using divergence at both synonymous sites and at short introns, I estimate {alpha} to be approximately two. This study thus provides the first evidence for male-biased mutation rates outside vertebrates, supporting the view that DNA sequence evolution is male-driven in a wide variety of taxa.


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