Tissue-specific gene expression in twelve species of Hawaiian Drosophilidae

This project contains gene expression profiles across three tissues and twelve species of Hawaiian Drosophilidae flies. Please contact Samuel Church and Cassandra Extavour for details. The dataset contains RNAseq data from tissues (ovary, head, carcass, and whole body) dissected from wild-caught flies. Species included in this study are Drosophila macrothrix, D. sproati, D. picticornis, D. primaevae, D. atroscutellata, D. tanythrix, D. mimica, D. nanella, Scaptomyzya cyrtandrae, S. varia, S. varipicta, and one as yet unidentified species of haleakalae group Drosophila (D. cf dives). All individuals were mature, healthy-appearing, females, with vitellogenic eggs in the ovaries (except when otherwise noted). Tissue samples were collected in triplicate, with one additional individual whole fly used as a reference, when sufficient numbers were available. Samples intended for reference libraries were sequenced as longer, paired-end reads, while samples intended for tissue-specific expression profiles were sequenced as shorter, single-end reads. Tissues were not pooled across individuals. Future analyses of these data will focus on one tissue, the female ovary, to identify a suite of core ovary-specific genes that have maintained tissue-specific expression. In this work, we will leverage the close relationship of this diverse, natural system to the laboratory model D. melanogaster to analyze the number of these core genes that are consistent with predictions from laboratory studies of the Drosophila ovary and oogenesis. We will then use phylogenetic contrasts of expression profiles to identify evolutionary shifts in ovary-specific expression that are significantly different from what we expect, based on statistically defined null hypotheses.