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Natural courtship song variation caused by an intronic retroelement in an ion channel gene
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Natural courtship song variation caused by an intronic retroelement in an ion channel gene
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Journal Article
Natural courtship song variation caused by an intronic retroelement in an ion channel gene
2016
Overview
Natural variation in the courtship song of
Drosophila
is mapped to the intronic insertion of a retroelement at the
slowpoke
locus, which encodes an ion channel.
On a wing and a song
An important aspect of courtship behaviour in
Drosophila
is the male courtship song, generated when the males vibrate their wings. The features of this courtship song and how this varies between
Drosophila
species have been well-characterized. David Stern and colleagues now map the genetic variation causal for natural variation in courtship song between two wild isolates of
D. simulans
and
D. mauritiana
to the insertion of a retroelement at the
slowpoke
(
slo
) locus, which encodes an ion channel.
Animal species display enormous variation for innate behaviours, but little is known about how this diversity arose. Here, using an unbiased genetic approach, we map a courtship song difference between wild isolates of
Drosophila simulans
and
Drosophila mauritiana
to a 966 base pair region within the
slowpoke
(
slo
) locus, which encodes a calcium-activated potassium channel
1
. Using the reciprocal hemizygosity test
2
, we confirm that
slo
is the causal locus and resolve the causal mutation to the evolutionarily recent insertion of a retroelement in a
slo
intron within
D. simulans
. Targeted deletion of this retroelement reverts the song phenotype and alters
slo
splicing. Like many ion channel genes,
slo
is expressed widely in the nervous system and influences a variety of behaviours
3
,
4
;
slo
-null males sing little song with severely disrupted features. By contrast, the natural variant of
slo
alters a specific component of courtship song, illustrating that regulatory evolution of a highly pleiotropic ion channel gene can cause modular changes in behaviour.
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group UK,Nature Publishing Group
Subject
/ 45/43
/ 45/47
/ 64/24
/ Analysis
/ Animals
/ Drosophila Proteins - genetics
/ Drosophila Proteins - metabolism
/ Female
/ Genes
/ Humanities and Social Sciences
/ Insects
/ Large-Conductance Calcium-Activated Potassium Channels - genetics
/ Large-Conductance Calcium-Activated Potassium Channels - metabolism
/ letter
/ Male
/ Males
/ Mutation
/ Quantitative Trait Loci - genetics
/ Science
