Sex-specific mRNA and miRNA responses to mating in Drosophila melanogaster

Mating induces extensive physiological, biochemical and behavioural changes in female animals of many taxa. These post-mating responses, and their underlying gene expression profiles, have been well-studied in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. In contrast, in male fruitflies surprisingly few post mating responses have been identified to date. The finding that post mating responses in females are initiated very rapidly predicts the existence of regulatory mechanisms in addition to transcriptional responses involving de novo gene expression. That the outcomes of post mating responses are markedly different for each sex also predicts that the post-mating gene expression profiles of the sexes should be markedly different and show divergent body part specificity. In this study, we tested both of these predictions by conducting high resolution profiles of body part-specific (head-thorax versus abdomen) changes in mRNA and sRNA expression following mating, simultaneously in both sexes of D. melanogaster.