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Updated: Jul 9, 2026

Quantifying Abdominal Pigmentation in Drosophila melanogaster
Published on: June 1, 2017
Pervasive and largely lineage-specific adaptive protein evolution in the dosage compensation complex of Drosophila
Mia T Levine1, Alisha K Holloway, Umbreen Arshad
1Section of Evolution and Ecology, University of California, Davis, California 95616, USA. mialevine@ucdavis.edu
Abstract:
Dosage compensation refers to the equalization of X-linked gene transcription among heterogametic and homogametic sexes. In Drosophila, the dosage compensation complex (DCC) mediates the twofold hypertranscription of the single male X chromosome. Loss-of-function mutations at any DCC protein-coding gene are male lethal. Here we report a population genetic analysis suggesting that four of the five core DCC proteins--MSL1, MSL2, MSL3, and MOF--are evolving under positive selection in D. melanogaster. Within these four proteins, several domains that range in function from X chromosome localization to protein-protein interactions have elevated, D. melanogaster-specific, amino acid divergence.
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