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The Y chromosome may contribute to sex-specific ageing in Drosophila
- Source :
- Nature ecology & evolution, Nature ecology & evolution, vol 4, iss 6
- Publication Year :
- 2020
- Publisher :
- Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2020.
-
Abstract
- Heterochromatin suppresses repetitive DNA, and a loss of heterochromatin has been observed in aged cells of several species, including humans and Drosophila. Males often contain substantially more heterochromatic DNA than females, due to the presence of a large, repeat-rich Y chromosome, and male flies generally have a shorter average lifespan than females. Here we show that repetitive DNA becomes de-repressed more rapidly in old male flies relative to females, and repeats on the Y chromosome are disproportionally mis-expressed during ageing. This is associated with a loss of heterochromatin at repetitive elements during ageing in male flies, and a general loss of repressive chromatin in aged males away from pericentromeric regions and the Y. By generating flies with different sex chromosome karyotypes (XXY females and X0 and XYY males), we show that repeat de-repression and average lifespan is correlated with the number of Y chromosomes. This suggests that sex-specific chromatin differences may contribute to sex-specific ageing in flies.
- Subjects :
- Male
Aging
Heterochromatin
Y chromosome
Article
03 medical and health sciences
0302 clinical medicine
Y Chromosome
Animals
Humans
Drosophila
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
030304 developmental biology
Genetics
0303 health sciences
Sex Chromosomes
Ecology
biology
Human evolutionary genetics
fungi
Chromosome
Karyotype
biology.organism_classification
Chromatin
Ageing
Female
030217 neurology & neurosurgery
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 2397334X
- Volume :
- 4
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Nature Ecology & Evolution
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....3848ec2d804f34c2fda0f043135c18ec