Detection of sexually antagonistic transmission distortions in trio datasets

Abstract

Sex dimorphisms are widespread in animals and plants, for morphological as well as physiological traits. Understanding the genetic basis of sex dimorphism and its evolution is crucial for understanding biological differences between the sexes. Genetic variants with sex-antagonistic effects on fitness are expected to segregate in populations at the early phases of sexual dimorphism emergence. Detecting such variants is notoriously difficult, and the few genome-scan methods employed so far have limited power and little specificity. Here, we propose a new framework to detect a signature of sexually antagonistic selection. We rely on trio datasets where sex-biased transmission distortions can be directly tracked from parents to offspring, and allows identifying signal of sexually antagonistic transmission distortions in genomic regions. We report the genomic location and recombination pattern surrounding 66 regions detected as potentially under sexually antagonist selection. We find an enrichment of genes associated with embryonic development within these regions. Last, we highlight two candidates regions for sexually antagonistic selection in humans.