Special projects between Bavaria and Florida

Biozentrum
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

College of Medicine
University of Florida

Genome-wide analysis of sex-specific alternative splicing

Genes often produce multiple transcripts through alternative splicing, which allows a single gene to produce several functionally distinct proteins. Alternative splicing is widespread among eukaryotes and has been shown to exhibit a strong sex bias in expression, resulting in different transcripts being expressed in males and females. Sex-biased gene expression is itself widespread, and is thought to alleviate intragenomic conflict between the sexes. Sex-specific alternative splicing is another means to reduce such conflict, although it has thus far received less attention. The goal of this project is to establish collaboration between the groups of Prof. McIntyre and Prof. Parsch to study the evolutionary and functional significance sex-specific alternative splicing in the genetic model system Drosophila melanogaster.