%0 Generic
%A Studer, Tania
%C Universität Heidelberg
%D 2018
%F heidok:25740
%K Sex-chromosomes,  Gene expression  Evo-devo  Development  Mammals  Sex-bias
%R 10.11588/heidok.00025740
%T The developmental sex-biased expression of genes escaping X chromosome inactivation across mammals
%U https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/25740/
%X In mammals, X-chromosome inactivation (XCI) re-establishes the dosage balance between male and female gene expression levels. However, up to a third of the X-linked genes escape this phenomenon with varying degrees of consistency across tissues, cell lines, or individuals. Here, I take advantage of a new extensive developmental dataset for several organs and species to explore the developmental dimension of sex chromosomes expression levels. I find that only a small fraction of genes escaping XCI show a consistent female overexpression across development, organs, and species. The consistently sex-biased genes are almost exclusively either directly involved in the establishment of XCI, or are protein-coding genes with a broadly expressed Y homolog. The conservation of the sex-bias of these genes across species suggests that they might be responsible for the evolution of escape from XCI. I also present and test a model of allelic contribution to the total expression levels of X-linked genes using marsupial bulk tissue RNA sequencing data. Finally, I describe my contribution to a study of sex-biased micro-RNAs in mammals.