A maternal-effect genetic incompatibility in Caenorhabditis elegans

Abstract

Selfish genetic elements spread in natural populations and have an important role in genome evolution. We discovered a selfish element causing a genetic incompatibility between strains of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. The element is made up of sup-35, a maternal-effect toxin that kills developing embryos, and pha-1, its zygotically expressed antidote. pha-1 has long been considered essential for pharynx development based on its mutant phenotype, but this phenotype in fact arises from a loss of suppression of sup-35 toxicity. Inactive copies of the sup-35/pha-1 element show high sequence divergence from active copies, and phylogenetic reconstruction suggests that they represent ancestral stages in the evolution of the element. Our results suggest that other essential genes identified by genetic screens may turn out to be components of selfish elements.