Abstract

In the filamentous ascomycete Neurospora tetrasperma, a large (approx. 7 Mbp) region of suppressed recombination surrounds the mating-type (mat) locus. While the remainder of the genome is largely homoallelic, this region of recombinational suppression, extending over 1500 genes, is associated with sequence divergence. Here, we used microarrays to examine how the molecular phenotype of gene expression level is linked to this divergent region, and thus to the mating type. Culturing N. tetrasperma on agar media that induce sexual/female or vegetative/male tissue, we found 196 genes significantly differentially expressed between mat A and mat a mating types. Our data show that the genes exhibiting mat-linked expression are enriched in the region genetically linked to mating type, and sequence and expression divergence are positively correlated. Our results indicate that the phenotype of mat A strains is optimized for traits promoting sexual/female development and the phenotype of mat a strains for vegetative/male development. This discovery of differentially expressed genes associated with mating type provides a link between genotypic and phenotypic divergence in this taxon and illustrates a fungal analogue to sexual dimorphism found among animals and plants.

Keywords

sexual dimorphism; Neurospora tetrasperma; gene expression

Published in

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
2013, Volume: 280, number: 1764, article number: 20130862
Publisher: ROYAL SOC

SLU Authors

• Samils, Nicklas

  • Department of Forest Mycology and Plant Pathology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Karlsson, Magnus

  • Department of Forest Mycology and Plant Pathology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Microbiology
Genetics


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2013.0862

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/50733