The Size and Content of the Sex-Determining Region of the Y Chromosome in Dioecious <em>Mercurialis annua</em>, a Plant with Homomorphic Sex Chromosomes

• DOI: 10.20944/preprints201804.0128.v1
• Publication Date: 2018-04-13T06:55:39Z
• Authors: Paris Veltsos; Guillaume Cossard; Emmanuel Beaudoing; Genséric Beydon; Camille Roux; Santiago C. Gonzá...; John R. Pannell
• Keywords: 0301 basic medicine; 03 medical and health sciences; plant_sciences

Many dioecious plants have sex chromosomes that are cytologically heteromorphic, but about half of species lack cytological differences between males and females thus homomorphic. Very little is known the size content non-recombining sex-determining region (SDR) in these species. Here, we assess SDR diploid herb Mercurialis annua, which has homomorphic shows signatures mild Y-chromosome degeneration. We used RNAseq to identify new Y-linked markers for M. annua. Twelve 24 transcripts with male-specific male-biased expression could only be PCR-amplified from Y-linked. found a further six sequences were present not using genome capture data multiple populations. sequence 17 sex-linked bacterial artificial (BACs), form 11 groups non-overlapping sequence, covering total length 1.5 Mb. Content analysis this suggests it enriched repeats, low gene density contains few candidate genes. The BACs map subset genetic map, estimated at least 14.5 This substantially larger than estimates other chromosomes, especially given small Our provide rare, high-resolution view Y chromosome plant.