Effects of a male meiotic driver on male and female transcriptomes in the house mouse

We investigated effects of the t haplotype in house mice, an autosomal male meiotic driver, on genome-wide gene expression patterns in males and females. We analysed gonads, liver and brain in adult sibling pairs differing in genotype, allowing us to identify t-associated differences in gene regulation. In testis, only 40% of differentially expressed genes mapped to the approximately 708 annotated genes comprising the t haplotype. Thus much of the activity of the t haplotype occurs in trans, and as up-regulation. Sperm maturation functions were enriched among both cis and trans acting t haplotype genes. Within the t haplotype, more down-regulation and differential exon usage was observed. In ovaries, liver, and brain, the majority of expression differences mapped to the t haplotype, and were largely independent of the differences seen in the testis. Overall, we found widespread transcriptional effects of this male meiotic driver in the house mouse genome. Overall design: We compared the transcriptomes of gonads, liver and brain of male and female siblings pairs (one of the genotype +/t, the other +/+) of house mice reared in the lab until sexual maturity, using RNA-seq. These are wild house mice (Mus musculus domesticus) descended from animals wild-caught from an intensively studied free-living population in Illnau, Switzerland [PMID: 23762510]