First sex-determing genes appeared 180 million years ago

Man or woman? Male or female? In humans and other mammals, the difference between sexes depends on one single element of the genome: the Y chromosome. It is present only in males, where the two sexual chromosomes are X and Y, whereas women have two X chromosomes. Thus, the Y is ultimately responsible for all the morphological and physiological differences between males and females.

But this has not always been the case. A very long time ago, the X and Y were identical, until the Y started to differentiate from the X in males. It then progressively shrank to such an extent that, nowadays, it only contains about 20 genes (the X carries more than one thousand genes). When did the Y originate and which genes have been kept? The answer has just been brought to light by the team of Henrik Kaessmann, Associate Professor at the CIG (UNIL) and group leader at the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, and their collaborators in Australia. They have established that the first « sex genes » appeared concomitantly in mammals around 180 million years ago.

By studying samples from several male tissues – in particular testicles – from different species, the researchers recovered the Y chromosome genes from the three major mammalian lineages: placentals (which include humans, apes, rodents and elephants), marsupials (such as opossums and kangaroos) and monotremes (egg-laying mammals, such as the platypus and the echidna, a kind of Australian porcupine). In total, the researchers worked with samples from 15 different mammals, representing these three lineages, as well as the chicken, which they included for comparison.

Instead of sequencing all Y chromosomes, which would have been a colossal task, according to Diego Cortez, researcher at CIG and SIB and main author of the study, the scientists opted for a shortcut. By comparing genetic sequences from male and female tissues, they eliminated all sequences common to both sexes in order to keep only those sequences corresponding to the Y chromosome. By doing so, they established the largest gene atlas of this “male” chromosome to date.

This study required more than 29,500 computing hours! A gigantic task, which could not have been performed without important technical means: the high-throughput DNA sequencers of the genomics platform at the Center for Integrative Genomics, for the generation of the genetic sequences, and the calculation means of Vital-IT, SIB’s high-performance computing centre, for the biological analyses.

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