ArticleMolecular biology and evolution2026
Defective splicing of Y-chromosome-linked gigantic genes contributes to hybrid male sterility in Drosophila.
Article in Molecular biology and evolution, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Fertility Gene Introns Harbor Transposable Elements that Shape Y-Loop Architecture.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- The molecular evolutionary basis of species formation revisited.Trends in genetics : TIG · 2025Review
- Recombination Suppression Drives Expansion of the Drosophila Dot Chromosome.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
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5 authors.
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Abstract
The Y chromosome evolves rapidly, often differing dramatically even between closely related species. While such divergence has long been suspected to contribute to hybrid male sterility, leading to reproductive isolation and thus speciation, the underlying mechanisms remain elusive. Here, we identify a molecular basis linking Y chromosome divergence to reproductive isolation in Drosophila. We show that male hybrids between D. simulans and D. mauritiana fail to properly express key Y-linked fertility genes. These genes contain unusually large introns, exceeding megabases and show substantial sequence divergence between species. In the hybrids, these gigantic introns are misprocessed, resulting in widespread splicing defects, including aberrant "back-splicing" events that join later exons to earlier ones. Our findings suggest that sequence divergence within introns can disrupt essential gene expression through defective splicing, providing a mechanistic link between rapid Y chromosome evolution and hybrid sterility. This work highlights the underappreciated role of intronic divergence in speciation.
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