Comparison of testes gene expression of D. melanogaster species and their hybrids

Males hybrids from the crosses between species of the D. simulans clade are steriles as the females are fertiles. Hybrid male sterility is due to severe defects in spermatogenesis and phenotypic differences are observed between the different hybrids involving D. simulans, D. sechellia and D. mauritiana. In this study we are comparing gene expression in the testes of hybrids involving the female D. simulans and the males D. melanogaster, D. mauritiana, or D. sechellia to the gene expression in species testes. Keywords: Comparative genomic hybridization 4 species (D. melanogaster, D. simulans, D. sechellia, D. mauritiana) and 3 different hybrids were used in this study. RNA extracted from whole D. melanogaster males was used as a reference. Hybridizations were perfomed using RNA extraxted from a pool of 200 testes from a sample with RNA extracted from whole D. melanogaster males. At least three independent replicates per hybridizations were performed