| Literature DB >> 33275891 |
Manfred Schartl1, Susanne Kneitz2, Jenny Ormanns2, Cornelia Schmidt2, Jennifer L Anderson3, Angel Amores4, Julian Catchen5, Catherine Wilson4, Dietmar Geiger6, Kang Du7, Mateo Garcia-Olazábal8, Sudha Sudaram9, Christoph Winkler9, Rainer Hedrich6, Wesley C Warren10, Ronald Walter11, Axel Meyer12, John H Postlethwait13.
Abstract
Sexual selection results in sex-specific characters like the conspicuously pigmented extension of the ventral tip of the caudal fin-the "sword"-in males of several species of Xiphophorus fishes. To uncover the genetic architecture underlying sword formation and to identify genes that are associated with its development, we characterized the sword transcriptional profile and combined it with genetic mapping approaches. Results showed that the male ornament of swordtails develops from a sexually non-dimorphic prepattern of transcription factors in the caudal fin. Among genes that constitute the exclusive sword transcriptome and are located in the genomic region associated with this trait we identify the potassium channel, Kcnh8, as a sword development gene. In addition to its neural function kcnh8 performs a known role in fin growth. These findings indicate that during evolution of swordtails a brain gene has been co-opted for an additional novel function in establishing a male ornament.Entities:
Keywords: QTL-mapping; bioelectric signaling; fin development; ornamental trait; potassium channel; sexual selection; swordtail; transcription factor pre-pattern
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Year: 2020 PMID： 33275891 PMCID： PMC8580132 DOI： 10.1016/j.cub.2020.11.028
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Curr Biol ISSN： 0960-9822 Impact factor: 10.834