Island-specific evolution of a sex-primed autosome in a sexual planarian

Longhua Guo (), Joshua S. Bloom, Daniel Dols-Serrate, James Boocock, Eyal Ben-David, Olga T. Schubert, Kaiya Kozuma, Katarina Ho, Emily Warda, Clarice Chui, Yubao Wei, Daniel Leighton, Tzitziki Lemus Vergara, Marta Riutort, Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado and Leonid Kruglyak ()
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Longhua Guo: University of California, Los Angeles
Joshua S. Bloom: University of California, Los Angeles
Daniel Dols-Serrate: Universitat de Barcelona
James Boocock: University of California, Los Angeles
Eyal Ben-David: Hebrew University of Jerusalem–Hadassah Medical School
Olga T. Schubert: University of California, Los Angeles
Kaiya Kozuma: University of California, Los Angeles
Katarina Ho: University of California, Los Angeles
Emily Warda: University of California, Los Angeles
Clarice Chui: University of California, Los Angeles
Yubao Wei: Zhengzhou University
Daniel Leighton: University of California, Los Angeles
Tzitziki Lemus Vergara: University of California, Los Angeles
Marta Riutort: Universitat de Barcelona
Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado: Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Leonid Kruglyak: University of California, Los Angeles

Nature, 2022, vol. 606, issue 7913, 329-334

Abstract: Abstract The sexual strain of the planarian Schmidtea mediterranea, indigenous to Tunisia and several Mediterranean islands, is a hermaphrodite1,2. Here we isolate individual chromosomes and use sequencing, Hi-C3,4 and linkage mapping to assemble a chromosome-scale genome reference. The linkage map reveals an extremely low rate of recombination on chromosome 1. We confirm suppression of recombination on chromosome 1 by genotyping individual sperm cells and oocytes. We show that previously identified genomic regions that maintain heterozygosity even after prolonged inbreeding make up essentially all of chromosome 1. Genome sequencing of individuals isolated in the wild indicates that this phenomenon has evolved specifically in populations from Sardinia and Corsica. We find that most known master regulators5–13 of the reproductive system are located on chromosome 1. We used RNA interference14,15 to knock down a gene with haplotype-biased expression, which led to the formation of a more pronounced female mating organ. On the basis of these observations, we propose that chromosome 1 is a sex-primed autosome primed for evolution into a sex chromosome.

Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04757-3

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