Oral Presentation Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution Conference 2016

Population and sex-specific transcriptomics of east Australian Drosophila (#207)

Marina Telonis-Scott 1 , Jeremy RB Newman 2 , Lauren M McIntyre 2 3 , Carla M Sgro 1
  1. School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, VICTORIA, Australia
  2. Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA
  3. Department of Statistics, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA

Gene expression divergence is widespread and thought to be crucial for environmental adaptation, despite largely uncharted genome-wide fitness consequences. General patterns using population transcriptomics however can provide broader insights into gene expression evolution in heterogeneous environments. Drosophila populations sampled from clinal gradients have been used to infer variation in gene regulation likely maintained by spatially varying selection, but so far little attention has been payed to the contribution of sex despite pervasive sexually dimorphic expression. Using RNAseq, we address the importance of sex-specific expression between populations that are thought to differ in ecology. The eastern Australian temperate-tropical latitudinal gradient is an excellent resource to study intraspecific local adaptation given the diverse climates, clines in thermal tolerance, fitness and morphology traits, and gene expression. We utilized the well-established ‘cline-end’ sampling strategy to survey gene expression in tropical and temperate D. melanogaster reared at 25°C. We discuss gene expression, alternative isoform expression and sequence variation between males and females from climatically diverse populations along the same environmental gradient in the context of climatic adaptation.