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The fate of W chromosomes in hybrids between wild silkmoths, Samia cynthia ssp.: no role in sex determination and reproduction.

ABSTRACT: Moths and butterflies (Lepidoptera) have sex chromosome systems with female heterogamety (WZ/ZZ or derived variants). The maternally inherited W chromosome is known to determine female sex in the silkworm, Bombyx mori. However, little is known about the role of W chromosome in other lepidopteran species. Here we describe two forms of the W chromosome, W and neo-W, that are transmitted to both sexes in offspring of hybrids from reciprocal crosses between subspecies of wild silkmoths, Samia cynthia. We performed crosses between S. c. pryeri (2n=28, WZ/ZZ) and S. c. walkeri (2n=26, neo-Wneo-Z/neo-Zneo-Z) and examined fitness and sex chromosome constitution in their hybrids. The F1 hybrids of both reciprocal crosses had reduced fertility. Fluorescence in situ hybridization revealed not only the expected sex chromosome constitutions in the backcross and F2 hybrids of both sexes but also females without the W (or neo-W) chromosome and males carrying the W (or neo-W) chromosome. Furthermore, crosses between the F2 hybrids revealed no association between the presence or absence of W (or neo-W) chromosome and variations in the hatchability of their eggs. Our results clearly suggest that the W (or neo-W) chromosome of S. cynthia ssp. plays no role in sex determination and reproduction, and thus does not contribute to the formation of reproductive barriers between different subspecies.

SUBMITTER: Yoshido A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4834383 | biostudies-literature | 2016 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The fate of W chromosomes in hybrids between wild silkmoths, Samia cynthia ssp.: no role in sex determination and reproduction.

Yoshido A A Marec F F Sahara K K

Heredity 20160113 5

Moths and butterflies (Lepidoptera) have sex chromosome systems with female heterogamety (WZ/ZZ or derived variants). The maternally inherited W chromosome is known to determine female sex in the silkworm, Bombyx mori. However, little is known about the role of W chromosome in other lepidopteran species. Here we describe two forms of the W chromosome, W and neo-W, that are transmitted to both sexes in offspring of hybrids from reciprocal crosses between subspecies of wild silkmoths, Samia cynthi ...[more]

PMID: 26758188

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Project description:BackgroundFunctional genomics has particular promise in silkworm biology for identifying genes involved in a variety of biological functions that include: synthesis and secretion of silk, sex determination pathways, insect-pathogen interactions, chorionogenesis, molecular clocks. Wild silkmoths have hardly been the subject of detailed scientific investigations, owing largely to non-availability of molecular and genetic data on these species. As a first step, in the present study we generated large scale expressed sequence tags (EST) in three economically important species of wild silkmoths. In order to make these resources available for the use of global scientific community, an EST database called 'WildSilkbase' was developed.DescriptionWildSilkbase is a catalogue of ESTs generated from several tissues at different developmental stages of 3 economically important saturniid silkmoths, an Indian golden silkmoth, Antheraea assama, an Indian tropical tasar silkmoth, A. mylitta and eri silkmoth, Samia cynthia ricini. Currently the database is provided with 57,113 ESTs which are clustered and assembled into 4,019 contigs and 10,019 singletons. Data can be browsed and downloaded using a standard web browser. Users can search the database either by BLAST query, keywords or Gene Ontology query. There are options to carry out searches for species, tissue and developmental stage specific ESTs in BLAST page. Other features of the WildSilkbase include cSNP discovery, GO viewer, homologue finder, SSR finder and links to all other related databases. The WildSilkbase is freely available from http://www.cdfd.org.in/wildsilkbase/.ConclusionA total of 14,038 putative unigenes was identified in 3 species of wild silkmoths. These genes provide important resources to gain insight into the functional and evolutionary study of wild silkmoths. We believe that WildSilkbase will be extremely useful for all those researchers working in the areas of comparative genomics, functional genomics and molecular evolution in general, and gene discovery, gene organization, transposable elements and genome variability of insect species in particular.

Dataset Information

The fate of W chromosomes in hybrids between wild silkmoths, Samia cynthia ssp.: no role in sex determination and reproduction.

Publications

The fate of W chromosomes in hybrids between wild silkmoths, Samia cynthia ssp.: no role in sex determination and reproduction.

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