{"doi":"10.1073/pnas.2301411120","title":"Sex-linked gene traffic underlies the acquisition of sexually dimorphic UV color vision in <i>Heliconius</i> butterflies","abstract":"The acquisition of novel sexually dimorphic traits poses an evolutionary puzzle: How do new traits arise and become sex-limited? Recently acquired color vision, sexually dimorphic in animals like primates and butterflies, presents a compelling model for understanding how traits become sex-biased. For example, some Heliconius butterflies uniquely possess UV (ultraviolet) color vision, which correlates with the expression of two differentially tuned UV-sensitive rhodopsins, UVRh1 and UVRh2. To discover how such traits become sexually dimorphic, we studied Heliconius charithonia , which exhibits female-specific UVRh1 expression. We demonstrate that females, but not males, discriminate different UV wavelengths. Through whole-genome shotgun sequencing and assembly of the H. charithonia genome, we discovered that UVRh1 is present on the W chromosome, making it obligately female-specific. By knocking out UVRh1 , we show that UVRh1 protein expression is absent in mutant female eye tissue, as in wild-type male eyes. A PCR survey of UVRh1 sex-linkage across the genus shows that species with female-specific UVRh1 expression lack UVRh1 gDNA in males. Thus, acquisition of sex linkage is sufficient to achieve female-specific expression of UVRh1 , though this does not preclude other mechanisms, like cis -regulatory evolution from also contributing. Moreover, both this event, and mutations leading to differential UV opsin sensitivity, occurred early in the history of Heliconius . These results suggest a path for acquiring sexual dimorphism distinct from existing mechanistic models. We propose a model where gene traffic to heterosomes (the W or the Y) genetically partitions a trait by sex before a phenotype shifts (spectral tuning of UV sensitivity).","journal":"Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences","year":2023,"id":335531,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":20,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9514,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1065408,"name":"Angelica Guadalupe Lara","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":415603,"name":"Andrew Dang","orcid":"0000-0001-5411-5696","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":428010,"name":"Kyle J. McCulloch","orcid":"0000-0002-6203-7381","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1065004,"name":"Dylan Rainbow","orcid":"0009-0001-8462-6718","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":81399,"name":"David Carter","orcid":"0000-0002-8419-3975","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":633300,"name":"Luna Thanh Ngo","orcid":null,"position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":575112,"name":"Edwin Solares","orcid":"0000-0002-3220-4927","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":575649,"name":"Iskander Said","orcid":"0000-0003-1159-4548","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":32462,"name":"Russell Corbett‐Detig","orcid":"0000-0001-6535-2478","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1065005,"name":"Lawrence E. Gilbert","orcid":"0000-0003-4418-2996","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":245849,"name":"J. J. Emerson","orcid":"0000-0001-9474-0891","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":512435,"name":"Adriana D. Briscoe","orcid":"0000-0001-8514-4983","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":557278,"name":"Mahul Chakraborty","orcid":"0000-0003-2414-9187","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":80,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:09:58.338267Z","pmid":"37552755","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}