A genome-wide test for paternal indirect genetic effects on lifespan in Drosophila melanogaster

Exposing sires to various environmental manipulations has demonstrated that paternal effects can be non-trivial also in species where male investment in offspring is almost exclusively limited to sperm. Whether paternal effects also have a genetic component (i.e. paternal indirect genetic effects - PIGEs) in such species is however largely unknown, primarily because of methodological difficulties separating indirect from direct effects of genes. PIGEs may nevertheless be important, since they have the capacity to contribute to evolutionary change. Here we use Drosophila genetics to construct a breeding design that allows testing nearly complete haploid genomes (>99%) for PIGEs. Using this technique, we estimate the variance in male lifespan due to PIGEs among four populations and compare this to the total paternal genetic variance (the sum of paternal indirect and direct genetic effects). Our results indicate that a substantial part of the total paternal genetic variance results from...

通过将父本暴露于各类环境操控实验条件下，研究证实：在雄性对后代的投入几乎仅局限于精子的物种中，父本效应同样不容忽视。然而，这类物种的父本效应是否同样具备遗传组分（即父本间接遗传效应（paternal indirect genetic effects, PIGEs）），目前仍未明确，其核心难点在于难以通过实验方法区分基因的间接与直接遗传效应。尽管如此，父本间接遗传效应仍具有重要研究价值，因其能够推动进化改变。本研究借助果蝇遗传学技术构建了一套繁育实验方案，可用于检测占比超99%的近乎完整单倍体基因组是否存在父本间接遗传效应。利用该实验方案，我们对四个果蝇种群中由父本间接遗传效应导致的雄性寿命方差进行了估算，并将其与父本总遗传方差（即父本间接与直接遗传效应的总和）进行了对比。本研究结果显示，父本总遗传方差中有相当一部分来源于……