Bradshaw, Sasha L;
Rodríguez, Enrique;
Wang, Hanting;
Yu, Cyn Thea;
De Villiers De La Noue, Cyril;
Hafezjee, Aadil;
Pomiankowski, Andrew;
(2025)
The metabolic costs of meiotic drive.
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
, 292
(2050)
, Article 20250779. 10.1098/rspb.2025.0779.
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Abstract
Selfish genetic elements, such as meiotic drive genes, disrupt Mendel's law of equal segregation by biasing their own transmission, often at a detriment to the rest of the genome. Metabolic costs of the X-linked sex ratio (SR) meiotic drive were investigated in stalk-eyed flies (Teleopsis dalmanni). The experiments demonstrate that individuals with SR have reduced capacity for ATP synthesis. The disruption in mitochondrial function leads to compensation exhibited in increased basal metabolic rate and greater food consumption across a range of diets. The range of metabolic costs of drive was evident in males and females at a similar magnitude. The likely cause lies in the accumulation of deleterious mutations within the series of large inversions on the drive X chromosome, subject to low recombination and weak natural selection. In females, the drive chromosome had a dominant effect, with a single copy causing substantial metabolic compromise. There was little evidence of male-specific metabolic costs, nor evidence of greater effects of drive chromosomes on female metabolism. This suggests that direct metabolic costs from meiotic drive on spermatogenesis and from sexually antagonistic selection are relatively weak. Our results underscore the broad physiological impacts that selfish genetic elements have on host metabolism and fitness.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The metabolic costs of meiotic drive |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1098/rspb.2025.0779 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2025.0779 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2025 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
| Keywords: | chromosome inversion, meiotic drive, metabolism, mitochondria, respiration, selfish genetic element, sexual selection, stalk-eyed fly, Animals, Male, Female, Meiosis, Diptera, Sex Ratio, X Chromosome, Adenosine Triphosphate, Basal Metabolism |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences > Genetics, Evolution and Environment |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10210866 |
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