Back

Does Sex-Differential Gene Expression Drive Sex-Differential Selection in Humans?

Ming, M. J.; Cheng, C.; Kirkpatrick, M.; Harpak, A.

2024-07-24 evolutionary biology
10.1101/2024.07.23.604672 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Sex differences in human transcriptomes have been argued to drive sex-differential natural selection (SDS). Here, we show that previous evidence supporting this hypothesis has been largely unfounded. We develop a new method to test for a genome-wide relationship between sex differences in expression and selection on expression-influencing alleles (eQTLs). We apply it across 39 human tissues and find no evidence for a general relationship. We offer possible explanations for the lack of evidence, including that it is due in part to eQTL ascertainment bias towards sites under weak selection. We conclude that the drivers of ongoing SDS in humans remain to be identified.

Matching journals

The top 4 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.