Project Summary/Abstract
Genomes are plagued by parasitic DNA sequences that do not promote health or fertility. Meiotic drive genes
are one such class of genetic parasite that selfishly manipulate gametogenesis to increase their own
transmission into the next generation. Rather than being passed to half of an individual’s offspring, like regular
alleles, meiotic drivers manipulate gametogenesis to ensure their transmission to most, or even all, the
offspring. Drivers are found throughout eukaryotes, including humans, but many more likely remain to be
identified. Characterizing meiotic drivers is important because these parasites can have major impacts on
fertility and health. Meiotic drivers can contribute to infertility directly by disrupting meiotic chromosome
segregation or by destroying gametes that inherit the competing allele. Meiotic drivers can also cause infertility
or other disease states indirectly by promoting the spread of linked deleterious (e.g., disease-associated)
alleles. Despite their large impact, there is relatively little molecular understanding of meiotic drivers or their
evolutionary impacts. However, there are emerging themes that unite many known drive systems, including the
use of a poison/antidote mechanism and the association of meiotic drive genes with distributed DNA sequence
repeats. This proposal exploits a highly tractable model, the wtf gene family found in fission yeasts, to
investigate the molecular mechanisms and evolutionary impacts of drive systems. The wtf genes enact drive
by destroying the wtf- gametes produced by wtf+/wtf- heterozygotes. Each wtf driver encodes both a poison
protein and a separate antidote protein on overlapping coding sequences. All developing gametes are
poisoned, but those that inherit the wtf+ allele are rescued by the antidote. This proposal aims to understand
the mechanisms underlying the toxicity of Wtf poison proteins and how the Wtf antidote proteins rescue that
toxicity. Analogous to other drive systems, the wtf genes are flanked by short repetitive DNA sequences
(transposon-derived repeats or 5S rDNA genes). The proposed work will test the idea that the repeats flanking
wtf genes affect their evolution by promoting non-allelic gene conversion. Finally, the proposed research
program will explore the evolutionary impact of the wtf genes on the flanking 5S rDNA genes. Specifically, we
will test the hypothesis that the wtf drivers have promoted the maintenance of deleterious versions of the 5S
rDNA genes, which encode an essential component of ribosomes. This research program will greatly expand
our understanding of the molecular mechanisms and molecular evolution of meiotic drive systems. This
knowledge will help guide the search for and the molecular characterization of meiotic drivers in more complex
systems, including humans. More broadly, this work will expand our understanding of DNA parasites and how
they can directly and indirectly impact health, particularly infertility. This expanded understanding should
ultimately lead to improved reproductive outcomes in humans.