AI Article Synopsis

  • The terrestrial isopod Armadillidium vulgare is being studied for its unique sex determination mechanisms, which involve both ZW sex chromosomes and the influence of Wolbachia bacteria.
  • Researchers sequenced the genome of the female A. vulgare, revealing that a significant portion (68%) consists of repetitive DNA and that the sex chromosomes are largely undifferentiated with minimal differences.
  • The study also identified various genes potentially linked to sex determination and highlighted the genome's value for further exploration of crustacean biology and evolution.

Article Abstract

The terrestrial isopod Armadillidium vulgare is an original model to study the evolution of sex determination and symbiosis in animals. Its sex can be determined by ZW sex chromosomes, or by feminizing Wolbachia bacterial endosymbionts. Here, we report the sequence and analysis of the ZW female genome of A. vulgare. A distinguishing feature of the 1.72 gigabase assembly is the abundance of repeats (68% of the genome). We show that the Z and W sex chromosomes are essentially undifferentiated at the molecular level and the W-specific region is extremely small (at most several hundreds of kilobases). Our results suggest that recombination suppression has not spread very far from the sex-determining locus, if at all. This is consistent with A. vulgare possessing evolutionarily young sex chromosomes. We characterized multiple Wolbachia nuclear inserts in the A. vulgare genome, none of which is associated with the W-specific region. We also identified several candidate genes that may be involved in the sex determination or sexual differentiation pathways. The A. vulgare genome serves as a resource for studying the biology and evolution of crustaceans, one of the most speciose and emblematic metazoan groups.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msz010DOI Listing

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