Data for: Effects of testosterone on gene expression are concordant between sexes but divergent across species of Sceloporus lizards

Hormones mediate sexual dimorphism by regulating sex-specific patterns of
gene expression, but it is unclear how much of this regulation involves
sex-specific hormone levels versus sex-specific transcriptomic responses
to the same hormonal signal. Moreover, transcriptomic responses to
hormones can evolve, but the extent to which hormonal pleiotropy in gene
regulation is conserved across closely related species is not well
understood. We addressed these issues by elevating testosterone levels in
juvenile females and males of three Sceloporus lizard species prior to
sexual divergence in circulating testosterone, then characterizing
transcriptomic responses in the liver. In each species, more genes were
responsive to testosterone in males than in females, suggesting that early
developmental processes prime sex-specific transcriptomic responses to
testosterone later in life. However, overall transcriptomic responses to
testosterone were concordant between sexes, with no genes exhibiting
sex-by-treatment interactions. By contrast, hundreds of genes exhibited
species-by-treatment interactions, particularly when comparing distantly
related species with different patterns of sexual dimorphism, suggesting
evolutionary lability in gene regulation by testosterone. Collectively,
our results indicate that early organizational effects may lead to
sex-specific differences in the magnitude, but not the direction, of
transcriptomic responses to testosterone, and that the hormone-genome
interface accrues regulatory changes over evolutionary time.