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Chromosomal location and gene paucity of the male specific region on papaya Y chromosome

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Abstract

Sex chromosomes in flowering plants evolved recently and many of them remain homomorphic, including those in papaya. We investigated the chromosomal location of papaya’s small male specific region of the hermaphrodite Y (Yh) chromosome (MSY) and its genomic features. We conducted chromosome fluorescence in situ hybridization mapping of Yh-specific bacterial artificial chromosomes (BACs) and placed the MSY near the centromere of the papaya Y chromosome. Then we sequenced five MSY BACs to examine the genomic features of this specialized region, which resulted in the largest collection of contiguous genomic DNA sequences of a Y chromosome in flowering plants. Extreme gene paucity was observed in the papaya MSY with no functional gene identified in 715 kb MSY sequences. A high density of retroelements and local sequence duplications were detected in the MSY that is suppressed for recombination. Location of the papaya MSY near the centromere might have provided recombination suppression and fostered paucity of genes in the male specific region of the Y chromosome. Our findings provide critical information for deciphering the sex chromosomes in papaya and reference information for comparative studies of other sex chromosomes in animals and plants.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Jianping Wang, Jong-Kuk Na, Zdenek Kubat, Wenli Zhang, Andrea Gschwend, and Virginie Lachaise for technical assistance, and Henrik Albert and Stephanie Whalen for reviewing the manuscript. This work was supported by a grant from NSF to R.M., Q.Y., P.H.M., J.J., and A.H.P. (DBI-0553417), a USDA-ARS Cooperative Agreement (CA 58-3020-8-134) with the Hawaii Agriculture Research Center, and a GACR grant to B.V. (521/06/0056) from the Czech Republic.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hawaii Agriculture Research Center, Aiea, HI, 96701, USA

    Qingyi Yu, Rachel L. Skelton, Andrea Blas & Ray Ming

  2. Center for Advance Studies in Genomics, Proteomics and Bioinformatics, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, 96822, USA

    Shaobin Hou, Jimmy H. Saw & Maqsudul Alam

  3. Laboratory of Plant Development Genetics, Institute of Biophysics, Czech Academy of Sciences, CZ-61256, Brno, Czech Republic

    Roman Hobza & Boris Vyskot

  4. Plant Genome Mapping Laboratory, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, 30602, USA

    F. Alex Feltus, Cornelia Lemke & Andrew H. Paterson

  5. Department of Horticulture, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, 53706, USA

    Xiue Wang, Weiwei Jin & Jiming Jiang

  6. Department of Molecular Bioscience and Bioengineering, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, 96822, USA

    Andrea Blas

  7. USDA-ARS, Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center, Hilo, HI, 96720, USA

    Paul H. Moore

  8. Department of Plant Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA

    Ray Ming

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  1. Qingyi Yu
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  2. Shaobin Hou
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  3. Roman Hobza
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  10. Jimmy H. Saw
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  16. Ray Ming
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Correspondence to Ray Ming.

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Communicated by Y. Van de Peer.

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Yu, Q., Hou, S., Hobza, R. et al. Chromosomal location and gene paucity of the male specific region on papaya Y chromosome. Mol Genet Genomics 278, 177–185 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00438-007-0243-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00438-007-0243-z

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