Abstract ...................................................... iii
Acknowledgments ................................................. v
Contents ...................................................... vii
List of figures ................................................ ix
List of tables .................................................. X
Acronyms ....................................................... Xi
1 introduction ................................................. 1
1.1 Mechanisms of Molecular Evolution ....................... 2
1.2 Evolution of Sex Chromosomes ............................ 6
1.3 Drosophila melanogaster as a Model Organism ............. 7
1.4 Microarray Technology .................................. 11
1.5 Aims of the Study ...................................... 12
2 Materials and methods ....................................... 15
2.1 Materials .............................................. 16
2.2 Drosophila melanogaster rearing; maintenance and
amplification .......................................... 17
2.3 Drosophila melanogaster embryo collection .............. 18
2.4 RNA Extraction and Quality Analysis .................... 19
2.5 Labelling, Amplification and Microarray Hybridization .. 20
2.6 Gene expression Analysis by R . ........................ 21
2.7 Gene expression divergence and selective pressures ..... 21
3 Results ..................................................... 25
3.1 Experimental and Computational Flow .................... 26
3.2 Gene expression divergence test ........................ 32
3.3 Chromosomal Divergence: Faster X Chromosome ............ 34
3.4 Fitness and Expression of Maternal and Zygotic Genes ... 36
3.5 Fitness and Early Gene Expression ...................... 38
3.6 Variation at the Genomic Level ......................... 42
4 Discussion .................................................. 45
4.1 Experimental Design .................................... 46
4.2 Modes of Selection ..................................... 47
4.3 Divergence of Gene expression in X Chromosome .......... 49
4.4 Outlook: Embryonic Transcriptome Vs Quantitative
Traits ................................................. 50
4.5 Outlook: Regulatory variants and expression levels of
maternal or zygotic genes .............................. 53
4.6 Conclusion ............................................. 54
A APPENDIX .................................................... 57
A.1 Fly Food Preparation for expanding the population ...... 58
A.2 Fly Food Preparation for fly stocks .................... 58
A.3 Applejuice Agar Plate Preparation for Embryo
Collection ............................................. 59
A.4 Cage set-up for embryo collection ...................... 59
A.5 Embryo Collection ...................................... 60
A.6 Total RNA Extraction from Fly Embryos by QIAGEN
RNeasy® Kit ............................................ 61
A.7 RNA quality assay with Agilent Bioanalyzer ............. 61
A.8 Array information ...................................... 63
A.9 Supplementary information on X chromosome divergence ... 65
A.10 Supplementary information on Fitness Study ............. 66
B bibliography ................................................ 75
Publications ................................................... 85
Declaration / Erklärung ....................................... 105
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