Sex and line specific gene expression and alternative splicing in Drosophila revealed. Drosophila melanogaster

Many multi-exon genes are subject to alternative splicing, which is thought to increase phenotypic complexity by allowing a single locus to produce multiple functionally distinct proteins. However, genetic and developmental variation in alternative splicing has never been examined systematically. We therefore undertook a genome-wide analysis of sex- and genotypic-specific splicing in Drosophila in conjunction with sex- and line-specific transcription. Keywords: microarray, sexual dimorphism, alternative splicing, genetical genomics, genetic variation Overall design: Experiments were conducted on flies from two standard strains of D. melanogaster: Oregon R [79] and 2b3 [80], and six randomly chosen recombinant inbred (RI) lines derived from these parental lines [81]. Each of the 8 lines was grown in four separate replicates of small mass-matings containing on average 20 adults, with a sex ratio of 1. We analyzed four independent biological replicates for each line and sex combination with a Cy3/Cy5 dye swap on the sexes.