Insect sex chromosome evolution: Conservation, turnover, and mechanisms of dosage compensation

Toups MA, Vicoso B. 2025. Insect sex chromosome evolution: Conservation, turnover, and mechanisms of dosage compensation. Current Opinion in Insect Science. 72, 101411.

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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.
Publishing Year
Date Published
2025-08-11
Journal Title
Current Opinion in Insect Science
Publisher
Elsevier
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by an Austrian Research Fund (FWF) grant to B.V. (PAT 8748323) and by the Louisiana Board of Regents Research Competitiveness Subprogram (LEQSF(2025-28)-RD-A-20) to MAT.
Volume
72
Article Number
101411
ISSN
eISSN
IST-REx-ID

Cite this

Toups MA, Vicoso B. Insect sex chromosome evolution: Conservation, turnover, and mechanisms of dosage compensation. Current Opinion in Insect Science. 2025;72. doi:10.1016/j.cois.2025.101411
Toups, M. A., & Vicoso, B. (2025). Insect sex chromosome evolution: Conservation, turnover, and mechanisms of dosage compensation. Current Opinion in Insect Science. Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cois.2025.101411
Toups, Melissa A, and Beatriz Vicoso. “Insect Sex Chromosome Evolution: Conservation, Turnover, and Mechanisms of Dosage Compensation.” Current Opinion in Insect Science. Elsevier, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cois.2025.101411.
M. A. Toups and B. Vicoso, “Insect sex chromosome evolution: Conservation, turnover, and mechanisms of dosage compensation,” Current Opinion in Insect Science, vol. 72. Elsevier, 2025.
Toups MA, Vicoso B. 2025. Insect sex chromosome evolution: Conservation, turnover, and mechanisms of dosage compensation. Current Opinion in Insect Science. 72, 101411.
Toups, Melissa A., and Beatriz Vicoso. “Insect Sex Chromosome Evolution: Conservation, Turnover, and Mechanisms of Dosage Compensation.” Current Opinion in Insect Science, vol. 72, 101411, Elsevier, 2025, doi:10.1016/j.cois.2025.101411.
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