Originally published as Genetics Published Articles Ahead of Print on August 9, 2008.

Genetics, Vol. 180, 317-327, September 2008, Copyright © 2008
doi:10.1534/genetics.107.084657

Localization of the Genetic Determinants of Meiosis Suppression in Daphnia pulex

Michael Lynch1, Amanda Seyfert, Brian Eads and Emily Williams

Department of Biology, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47405

1 Corresponding author: Department of Biology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405.
E-mail: milynch{at}indiana.edu

Although ~1 in 10,000 animal species is capable of parthenogenetic reproduction, the evolutionary causes and consequences of such transitions remain uncertain. The microcrustacean Daphnia pulex provides a potentially powerful tool for investigating these issues because lineages that are obligately asexual in terms of female function can nevertheless transmit meiosis-suppressing genes to sexual populations via haploid sperm produced by environmentally induced males. The application of association mapping to a wide geographic collection of D. pulex clones suggests that sex-limited meiosis suppression in D. pulex has spread westward from a northeastern glacial refugium, conveyed by a dominant epistatic interaction among the products of at least four unlinked loci, with one entire chromosome being inherited through males in a nearly nonrecombining fashion. With the enormous set of genomic tools now available for D. pulex, these results set the stage for the determination of the functional underpinnings of the conversion of meiosis to a mitotic-like mode of inheritance.


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Genetics 2008 180: NP. [Full Text]