Comparison of D. simulans/D. mauritiana F1 male hybrid genome-wide expression values to pure-species parents

Species often produce sterile hybrids early in their evolutionary divergence, and some evidence suggests that hybrid sterility may be associated with deviations or disruptions in gene expression. In support of this idea, many studies have shown that a high proportion of male-biased genes are underexpressed compared to non-sex-biased genes in sterile F1 male hybrids of Drosophila species. In this study, we examined and compared patterns of misexpression in 4 day old sterile male F1 hybrids of Drosophila simulans and its sibling species, D. mauritiana. We analyzed hybrids using genome-wide D. melanogaster arrays from the Drosophila Genome Resource Center (DGRC). The results from a custom array (GPL4022) for this species pair, from the custom array and the genome-wide array for the D. simulans-D. sechellia species pair, and from the larvae of these two species pairs using the custom array, are presented separately. Keywords: Comparison of pure-species Drosophila expression to hybrid expression We analyzed 11 arrays: 4 of sim-mau vs. mau, 4 of sim-mau vs. sim, and one each of self-hybridizations (sim vs. sim, sim-mau vs. sim-mau, mau vs. mau).