Abstract

Meiotic drivers bias gametogenesis to ensure their transmission into more than half the offspring of a heterozygote. In Schizosaccharomyces pombe, wtf meiotic drivers destroy the meiotic products (spores) that do not inherit the driver from a heterozygote, thereby reducing fertility. wtf drivers encode both a Wtf poison protein and a Wtf antidote protein using alternative transcriptional start sites. Here, we analyze how the expression and localization of the Wtf proteins are regulated to achieve drive. We show that transcriptional timing and selective protein exclusion from developing spores ensure that all spores are exposed to Wtf4 poison, but only the spores that inherit wtf4 receive a dose of Wtf4 antidote sufficient for survival. In addition, we show that the Mei4 transcription factor, a master regulator of meiosis, controls the expression of the wtf4 poison transcript. This dual transcriptional regulation, which includes the use of a critical meiotic transcription factor, likely complicates the universal suppression of wtf genes without concomitantly disrupting spore viability. We propose that these features contribute to the evolutionary success of the wtf drivers.

Competing Interest Statement

NLN, MABN, SEZ: Inventor on patent application based on this work. Patent application serial 62/491,107. The other authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Details

Title
S. pombe wtf genes use dual transcriptional regulation and selective protein exclusion from spores to cause meiotic drive
Author
Nuckolls, Nicole L; Srinivasa, Ananya Nidamangala; Mok, Anthony C; Bravo Núñez, María Angélica; Lange, Jeffrey J; Gallagher, Todd J; Seidel, Chris W; Zanders, Sarah
University/institution
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
Section
New Results
Publication year
2021
Publication date
Oct 1, 2021
Publisher
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
ISSN
2692-8205
Source type
Working Paper
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2578268508
Copyright
© 2021. This article is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (“the License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.