Sperm are haploid, but must be functionally equivalent to distribute alleles equally among progeny. Accordingly, gene products are shared through spermatid cytoplasmic bridges which erase phenotypic differences between individual haploid sperm. Here, we show that a large class of mammalian genes are not completely shared across these bridges. We term these genes "genoinformative markers" (GIMs) and show that a subset can act as selfish genetic elements that spread alleles unevenly through murine, bovine, and human populations. We identify evolutionary pressure to avoid conflict between sperm and somatic function as GIMs are enriched for testis-specific gene expression, paralogs, and isoforms. Therefore, GIMs and sperm-level natural selection may help explain why testis gene expression patterns are an outlier relative to all other tissues.

中文翻译：

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广泛的单倍体偏向基因表达使精子水平的自然选择成为可能

精子是单倍体，但必须在功能上等效才能在后代之间平均分配等位基因。因此，基因产物通过精子细胞胞质桥共享，消除了单个单倍体精子之间的表型差异。在这里，我们展示了一大类哺乳动物基因在这些桥梁中并未完全共享。我们将这些基因称为“基因信息标记”(GIM)，并表明一个子集可以充当自私的遗传元素，在小鼠、牛和人类种群中不均匀地传播等位基因。我们确定进化压力以避免精子和体细胞功能之间的冲突，因为 GIM 富含睾丸特异性基因表达、旁系同源物和同种型。因此，GIM 和精子水平的自然选择可能有助于解释为什么睾丸基因表达模式相对于所有其他组织是异常值。