Create 2020-WRefugium.md

_publications/2020-WRefugium.md

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+title: "The avian W chromosome is a refugium for endogenous retroviruses with likely effects on female-biased mutational load and genetic incompatibilities"
+collection: publications
+permalink: /publication/2020-WRefugium
+excerpt: 'It is a broadly observed pattern that the non-recombining regions of sex-limited chromosomes (Y and W) accumulate more repeats than the rest of the genome, even in species like birds with a low genome-wide repeat content. Here we show that in birds with highly heteromorphic sex chromosomes, the W chromosome has a transposable element (TE) density of >55% compared to the genome-wide density of <10%, and contains over half of all full-length (thus potentially active) endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) of the entire genome. Using RNA-seq and protein mass spectrometry data, we were able to detect signatures of female-specific ERV expression. We hypothesise that the avian W chromosome acts as a refugium for active ERVs, likely leading to female-biased mutational load that may influence female physiology similar to the "toxic-Y" effect in Drosophila. Furthermore, Haldane's rule predicts that the heterogametic sex has reduced fertility in hybrids. We propose that the excess of W-linked active ERVs over the rest of the genome may be an additional explanatory variable for Haldane's rule, with consequences for genetic incompatibilities between species through TE/repressor mismatches in hybrids. Together, our results suggest that the sequence content of female-specific W chromosomes can have effects far beyond sex determination and gene dosage.'
+date: 2020-07-31
+venue: 'BioRxiv'
+paperurl: 'https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.31.230854v1'
+citation: 'Peona, V., Palacios-Gimenez, O.M., Blommaer, J. Liu, Jing., Haryoko, T., Jønsson, K.A., Irestedt, M., Zhou, Q., Jern, P., Suh, A. (2020). &quot;The avian W chromosome is a refugium for endogenous retroviruses with likely effects on female-biased mutational load and genetic incompatibilities .&quot; <i>BioRxiv</i>'
+---
+[Download paper here](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.31.230854v1)