{"doi":"10.1371/journal.pgen.1009662","title":"Distinct spermiogenic phenotypes underlie sperm elimination in the Segregation Distorter meiotic drive system","abstract":"Segregation Distorter (SD) is a male meiotic drive system in Drosophila melanogaster. Males heterozygous for a selfish SD chromosome rarely transmit the homologous SD+ chromosome. It is well established that distortion results from an interaction between Sd, the primary distorting locus on the SD chromosome and its target, a satellite DNA called Rsp, on the SD+ chromosome. However, the molecular and cellular mechanisms leading to post-meiotic SD+ sperm elimination remain unclear. Here we show that SD/SD+ males of different genotypes but with similarly strong degrees of distortion have distinct spermiogenic phenotypes. In some genotypes, SD+ spermatids fail to fully incorporate protamines after the removal of histones, and degenerate during the individualization stage of spermiogenesis. In contrast, in other SD/SD+ genotypes, protamine incorporation appears less disturbed, yet spermatid nuclei are abnormally compacted, and mature sperm nuclei are eventually released in the seminal vesicle. Our analyses of different SD+ chromosomes suggest that the severity of the spermiogenic defects associates with the copy number of the Rsp satellite. We propose that when Rsp copy number is very high (> 2000), spermatid nuclear compaction defects reach a threshold that triggers a checkpoint controlling sperm chromatin quality to eliminate abnormal spermatids during individualization.","journal":"PLoS Genetics","year":2021,"id":161044,"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":30,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9603,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":343007,"name":"Xiaolu Wei","orcid":"0000-0001-9952-3757","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":557279,"name":"Ching-Ho Chang","orcid":"0000-0001-9361-1190","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":289357,"name":"Amanda M. Larracuente","orcid":"0000-0001-5944-5686","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":675246,"name":"Benjamin Loppin","orcid":"0000-0002-7166-9233","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":675247,"name":"Raphaëlle Dubruille","orcid":"0000-0002-7710-3716","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":388013,"name":"Marion Herbette","orcid":"0000-0002-7683-3207","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":68,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:44:52.299342Z","pmid":"34228705","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":[]}