RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 <em>Maleness-on-the-Y</em> (<em>MoY</em>) orchestrates male sex determination in major agricultural fruit fly pests
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 533646
DO 10.1101/533646
A1 Angela Meccariello
A1 Marco Salvemini
A1 Pasquale Primo
A1 Brantley Hall
A1 Panagiota Koskinioti
A1 Martina Dalíková
A1 Andrea Gravina
A1 Michela Anna Gucciardino
A1 Federica Forlenza
A1 Maria-Eleni Gregoriou
A1 Domenica Ippolito
A1 Simona Maria Monti
A1 Valeria Petrella
A1 Maryanna Martina Perrotta
A1 Stephan Schmeing
A1 Alessia Ruggiero
A1 Francesca Scolari
A1 Ennio Giordano
A1 Konstantina T. Tsoumani
A1 Frantisek Marec
A1 Nikolai Windbichler
A1 Javaregowda Nagaraju
A1 Kallare P. Arunkumar
A1 Kostas Bourtzis
A1 Kostas D. Mathiopoulos
A1 Jiannis Ragoussis
A1 Luigi Vitagliano
A1 Zhijian Tu
A1 Philippos Aris Papathanos
A1 Mark D. Robinson
A1 Giuseppe Saccone
YR 2019
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/02/07/533646.abstract
AB In insects, rapidly evolving primary sex-determining signals are transduced by a conserved regulatory module producing sex-specific proteins that direct sex determination and sexual differentiation1-4. In the agricultural pest Ceratitis capitata (medfly), a Y-linked maleness factor (M) is thought to repress the autoregulatory splicing of transformer (Cctra), which is required in XX individuals to establish and maintain female sex determination5,6. Despite previous attempts of isolating Y-linked genes using the medfly whole genome, the M factor has remained elusive7. Here, we report the identification of a Y-linked gene, Maleness-on the-Y (MoY), and show that it encodes a small novel protein which is both necessary and sufficient for medfly male sex determination. Transient silencing of MoY in XY individuals leads to the development of fertile females while transient expression of MoY in XX individuals results in fertile males. Notably, a cross between these sex reverted individuals gives rise to both fertile males and females indicating that a functional MoY can be maternally transmitted. In contrast to the diversity of M factors found in dipteran species8-11, we discovered MoY orthologues in seven other Tephritid species spanning ∼111 millions of years of evolution (Mya). We confirmed their male determining function in the olive fly (Bactrocera oleae) and the oriental fruit fly (Bactrocera dorsalis). This unexpected conservation of the primary MoY signal in a large number of important agricultural pests12 will facilitate the development of transferable genetic control strategies in these species, for example sterile male releases or sex-ratio-distorting gene drives.