Date: April 1, 2019
Source: University of Vienna
Birds-of-paradise
are a group of songbird species, and are known for their magnificent male
plumage and bewildering sexual display. Now, an international collaborative
work involving Dept. of Molecular Evolution and Development of University of
Vienna, Zhejiang University of China, and Swedish Museum of Natural History
analyzed all together 11 songbird species genomes, including those of five
bird-of-paradise species, and reconstructed the evolutionary history of their
sex chromosomes.
Birds
have an opposite type of sex chromosomes to that of mammals. That is, females
have one Z chromosome and one female-specific W chromosome, while males have
two Z chromosomes. The W chromosome is much smaller and gene-poor, similar to
the Y chromosome of human. By sequencing the female songbird genomes, the
researchers now uncovered the details of how Z and W chromosomes had become
separated for their evolutionary trajectories, and which factors dictate the
fates of the genes on the W chromosome.
