RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Rapid evolution of female-biased genes among four species of Anopheles malaria mosquitoes JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 081620 DO 10.1101/081620 A1 Francesco Papa A1 Nikolai Windbichler A1 Robert M. Waterhouse A1 Alessia Cagnetti A1 Rocco D’Amato A1 Tania Presampieri A1 Mara K. N. Lawniczak A1 Tony Nolan A1 Philippos Aris Papathanos YR 2016 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/10/17/081620.abstract AB Understanding how phenotypic differences between males and females arise from the sex-biased expression of nearly identical genomes can often reveal important insights into the biology and evolution of a species. Among Anopheles mosquito species, these phenotypic differences include vectorial capacity, as it is only females that blood feed and thus transmit human malaria. Here, we use RNA-seq data from multiple tissues of four vectors spanning the Anopheles phylogeny to explore the genomic and evolutionary properties of sex-biased genes. We find that in these mosquitoes, in contrast to what has been found in many other organisms, female-biased genes are more rapidly evolving in sequence, expression, and genic turnover, than male-biased genes. Our results suggests that this atypical pattern may be due to the combination of sex-specific life history challenges encountered by females, such as blood feeding. Furthermore, female propensity to only mate once in nature in male swarms likely diminishes sexual selection of post-reproductive traits related to sperm competition among males. We also develop a comparative framework to systematically explore tissue- and sex-specific splicing, to document its conservation throughout the genus and identify a set of candidate genes for future functional analyses of sex-specific isoform usage. Finally, our data reveals that the deficit of male-biased genes on the X chromosomes in Anopheles is a conserved feature in this genus and can be directly attributed to chromosome-wide transcriptional regulation that demasculinizes the X in male reproductive tissues.