Sex chromosome evolution: novel insights from a distant eukaryotic lineage

Sexual reproduction is an extraordinarily widespread phenomenon that assures the production of new genetic combinations in nearly all eukaryotic lineages. Although the core features of sexual reproduction (meiosis and syngamy) are highly conserved, the control mechanisms that determine whether an individual is male or female are remarkably labile across eukaryotes. In genetically controlled sexual systems, gender is determined by sex chromosomes, which have emerged independently and repeatedly during evolution. Sex chromosomes have been studied in only a handful of classical model organism, and empirical knowledge on the origin and evolution of the sexes is still surprisingly incomplete. I will present how our group is exploiting the richness of sexual characteristics of the brown algae to gain novel insights into the functional and evolutionary interactions between the sex chromosomes and reproductive/life cycle features.