Systematic review reveals sexually antagonistic knockouts in model organisms

Sexual antagonism is thought to be an important selective force in multiple evolutionary processes, but very few examples of the genes involved are known. Such a deficit of loci could partially be explained by the lack of overlap in terminology between scientific disciplines. Following a similar review in humans, we searched systematically for studies that described genes with sexually antagonistic or sex-opposite effects in any taxa, using terms designed to capture alternative descriptions of sexual antagonism. Despite drawing on a potentially very large pool of studies we found only eight articles, which between them described seven candidate variants, five of these were gene knockouts. In every case, the variants had net negative effects on the focal trait. One locus was independently validated between studies, but in comparison to previous data on variants in humans and the fruit-fly, the studies generally suffered from small sample sizes, with concomitant high variance. Our review highlights the radically different effects that gene deletions can have on males and females, where the beneficial effects seen in one sex may facilitate the evolution of gene loss. We searched systematically for genetic variants with sexually antagonistic or sex-opposite effects in any taxa. Of 2116 articles, we found seven candidate variants, five of which were gene knockouts. Our review highlights the radically different effects that gene deletions can have on males and females, where the beneficial effects seen in one sex may facilitate the evolution of gene loss.