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. 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]