Friday, August 13, 2010

Lab-meeting on intralocus sexual conflict and transcriptomics

It is time for the fall's first lab-meeting, and what could possibly be a better start than to discuss a paper about how intralocus sexual conflict might (or might not!) leave a transcriptomic signature in the organism? The study I wish to discuss is a relatively new paper in PLoS Biology by Paulo Innocenti and Ted Morrow. The authors combined quantitative-genetic fitness assays in the fruitfly (Drosophila melanogaster) to investigate sex-biased gene expression and its links to intralocus sexual conflict, i. e. the developmental conflict that arises between male and female phenotypes, that arises due to the fact that both sexes share a common gene pool.

We have discussed intralocus sexual conflict and its consequences in previous lab-meetings, and some of our recent lab-publications that are relevant to this topic can be found here (lizards) and here (damselflies). The authors of the current study used microarrays to study sex-specific transcripts, a technique which is now rapidly replaced by "454-sequencing" and other methods in this rapidly moving field of molecular biology.

The time and place for the lab-meeting is as usual: Wednesday August 15 at 10.15 in the "Darwin Room" (2nd floor, Ecology Building). Fika volunteers are encouraged to step forward. Below, I have put an abstract to the paper which can be downloaded here, and you can also find an interesting short comment by Robin Meadows, also published in PLoS Biology.


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