Carica papaya Raw sequence reads. Carica papaya

One evolutionary path to dioecy from hermaphroditism is via a gynodioecious intermediate. The evolution of dioecy may also coincide with the formation of sex chromosomes that possess sex-determining loci that are physically linked in a region of suppressed recombination. Dioecious papaya (Carica papaya) has an XY chromosome system, where the presence of a Y chromosome determines males. However, in cultivation, papaya is gynodioecious, due to the conversion of the male Y chromosome to a hermaphroditic Yh chromosome during its domestication. We investigated gene expression linked to the X, Y, and Yh chromosomes at different floral developmental stages in order to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) that may be involved in the sexual reversion of males to hermaphrodites.