Retrogenes reveal the direction of sex-chromosome evolution in mosquitoes

Abstract

The mosquito Anopheles gambiae has heteromorphic sex chromosomes, while the mosquito Aedes aegypti has homomorphic sex chromosomes. We use retrotransposed gene duplicates to show an excess of movement off the An. gambiae X chromosome only after the split with Ae. aegypti, suggesting that their ancestor had homomorphic sex chromosomes. Copyright © 2010 by the Genetics Society of America.