PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Edridge D’Souza
AU  - Kathryn Weinand
AU  - Elizaveta Hosage
AU  - Steve Gisselbrecht
AU  - Vicky Markstein
AU  - Peter Markstein
AU  - Martha L. Bulyk
AU  - Michele Markstein
TI  - GA-repeats on mammalian X chromosomes support Ohno’s hypothesis of dosage compensation by transcriptional upregulation
AID  - 10.1101/485300
DP  - 2019 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 485300
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/04/02/485300.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/04/02/485300.full
AB  - Over 50 years ago, Susumo Ohno proposed that dosage compensation in mammals would require upregulation of gene expression on the single active X chromosome, a mechanism which to date is best understood in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Here, we report that the GA-repeat sequences that recruit the conserved MSL dosage compensation complex to the Drosophila X chromosome are also enriched across mammalian X chromosomes, providing genomic support for the Ohno hypothesis. We show that mammalian GA-repeats derive in part from transposable elements, suggesting a mechanism whereby unrelated X chromosomes from dipterans to mammals accumulate binding sites for the MSL dosage compensation complex through convergent evolution, driven by their propensity to accumulate transposable elements.