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EVOLUTIONARY GENETICS

The puzzling guppy Y chromosome

Nature Reviews Genetics volume 22, pages 480–481 (2021)Cite this article

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The XY sex chromosomes familiar to most geneticists, from mammals and Drosophila, have an X chromosome with a gene density much like that of the autosomes and a highly degenerated Y chromosome that has lost almost all the genes ancestrally present. The XY pairs in several fish species, however, share most genes and can undergo crossing over, perhaps because their sex-determining genes evolved recently and recombination has not yet become suppressed across the rest of the chromosome pair. In the guppy (Poecilia reticulata), it is still unclear whether any completely sex-linked region exists.

In 1970, at a time when genetic markers were rarely available, a paper by Haskins et al. described intriguing results from testing homozygotes for guppy Y chromosomes (made by mating normal XY males and XY fish treated with oestrogen to turn them into females). The experiments used Y chromosomes characterized by carrying different male coloration factors, and beautifully demonstrate the use of classical genetics.

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References

Original article

  • Haskins, C. P. et al. Stabilised heterozygosis of supergenes mediating certain Y-linked colour patterns in populations of Lebistes Reticulatus. Heredity 25, 575–589 (1970)

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Related article

  • McCune, A. R. et al. A low genomic number of recessive lethals in natural populations of bluefin killifish and zebrafish. Science 296, 2398–2401 (2002)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Evolutionary Biology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Deborah Charlesworth

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  1. Deborah Charlesworth
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Correspondence to Deborah Charlesworth.

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Charlesworth, D. The puzzling guppy Y chromosome. Nat Rev Genet 22, 480–481 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41576-021-00369-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41576-021-00369-1

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