@article{21486,
  abstract     = {Sex-chromosome systems are highly variable across animals, but how they transition from one to another is not well understood. Diptera have undergone multiple sex-chromosome turnovers and expansions while maintaining their general chromosomal content, which makes them an ideal clade to study such transitions. We analyzed more than 100 dipteran whole-genome assemblies and identified 4 new lineages that underwent sex-chromosome turnover (in addition to the 5 previously reported). We find that the majority of turnovers happened in the group Schizophora, which tend to have fewer genes on Muller element F (the chromosome homologous to the ancestral insect X chromosome) than lower dipterans, a factor previously hypothesized to facilitate turnover. Most derived X chromosomes have higher GC content than autosomes, consistent with a high prevalence of male achiasmy in Diptera. In addition, an excess of gene movement out of the X is detected for most of these new X chromosomes, and many of these moved genes have high testis expression in Drosophila, suggesting that out-of-X gene movement contributes to the long-term demasculinization of X chromosomes.},
  author       = {Layana Franco, Lorena Alexandra and Toups, Melissa A and Vicoso, Beatriz},
  issn         = {2056-3744},
  journal      = {Evolution Letters},
  publisher    = {Oxford University Press},
  title        = {{Causes and consequences of sex-chromosome turnovers in Diptera}},
  doi          = {10.1093/evlett/qrag003},
  year         = {2026},
}

@article{20009,
  abstract     = {The suppression of recombination between young X and Y chromosomes is a crucial step in their evolution, but why it occurs is not known. The detailed characterization of the polymorphic sex chromosomes of the fourspine stickleback by Liu et al. promises to shed new light on this longstanding question.},
  author       = {Vicoso, Beatriz},
  issn         = {0169-5347},
  journal      = {Trends in Ecology and Evolution},
  number       = {8},
  pages        = {728--730},
  publisher    = {Elsevier},
  title        = {{Sex chromosome evolution in action in fourspine sticklebacks}},
  doi          = {10.1016/j.tree.2025.06.010},
  volume       = {40},
  year         = {2025},
}

@article{20182,
  abstract     = {Sex chromosomes have evolved many times throughout the tree of life, and understanding what has shaped their unusual morphological, sequence, and regulatory features has been a long-standing goal. Most early insights into insect sex chromosome biology came from a few model species, such as the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, which limited broad-scale evolutionary inferences. More recently, extensive comparative genomics studies have uncovered several unexpected patterns, which we highlight in this review. First, we describe the conservation of the ancestral X chromosome over 450 million years but also its recurrent turnover (i.e. its reversal to an autosome when a new X chromosome arose) in at least one order. We then summarize classical and more recent findings on how insects modulate the expression of X-linked genes following the degradation of the Y chromosome and how the diverse mechanisms of dosage compensation identified may elucidate important principles of sex chromosome regulatory evolution.},
  author       = {Toups, Melissa A and Vicoso, Beatriz},
  issn         = {2214-5753},
  journal      = {Current Opinion in Insect Science},
  publisher    = {Elsevier},
  title        = {{Insect sex chromosome evolution: Conservation, turnover, and mechanisms of dosage compensation}},
  doi          = {10.1016/j.cois.2025.101411},
  volume       = {72},
  year         = {2025},
}

@article{19735,
  abstract     = {The males and females of the brine shrimp Artemia franciscana are highly dimorphic, and this dimorphism is associated with substantial sex-biased gene expression in heads and gonads. How these sex-specific patterns of expression are regulated at the molecular level is unknown. A. franciscana also has differentiated ZW sex chromosomes, with complete dosage compensation, but the molecular mechanism through which compensation is achieved is unknown. Here, we conducted CUT&TAG assays targeting 7 post-translational histone modifications (H3K27me3, H3K9me2, H3K9me3, H3K36me3, H3K27ac, H3K4me3, and H4K16ac) in heads and gonads of A. franciscana, allowing us to divide the genome into 12 chromatin states. We further defined functional chromatin signatures for all genes, which were correlated with transcript level abundances. Differences in the occupancy of the profiled epigenetic marks between sexes were associated with differential gene expression between males and females. Finally, we found a significant enrichment of the permissive H4K16ac histone mark in the Z-specific region in both tissues of females but not males, supporting the role of this histone mark in mediating dosage compensation of the Z chromosome.},
  author       = {Bett, Vincent K and Trejo Arellano, Minerva S and Vicoso, Beatriz},
  issn         = {1537-1719},
  journal      = {Molecular Biology and Evolution},
  number       = {5},
  publisher    = {Oxford University Press},
  title        = {{Chromatin landscape is associated with sex-biased expression and Drosophila-like dosage compensation of the Z chromosome in Artemia franciscana}},
  doi          = {10.1093/molbev/msaf085},
  volume       = {42},
  year         = {2025},
}

@phdthesis{20449,
  author       = {Bett, Vincent K},
  issn         = {2663-337X},
  pages        = {114},
  publisher    = {Institute of Science and Technology Austria},
  title        = {{Evolution and regulation of the Z chromosome}},
  doi          = {10.15479/AT-ISTA-20449},
  year         = {2025},
}