It’s a trap?! Escape from an ancient, ancestral sex chromosome system and implication of Foxl2 as the putative primary sex-determining gene in a lizard (Anguimorpha; Shinisauridae)

Although sex determination is ubiquitous in vertebrates, mechanisms of sex determination vary from environmentally to genetically influenced. In vertebrates, genetic sex determination is typically accomplished with sex chromosomes. Groups like mammals maintain conserved sex chromosome systems, while sex chromosomes in most vertebrate clades are not conserved across similar evolutionary timescales. One group inferred to have an evolutionarily stable mode of sex determination is Anguimorpha, a clade of charismatic taxa including monitor lizards, Gila monsters, and crocodile lizards. The common ancestor of extant anguimorphs possessed a ZW system that has been retained across the clade. However, the sex chromosome system in the endangered, monotypic family of crocodile lizards (Shinisauridae) has remained elusive. Here, we analyze genomic data to demonstrate that Shinisaurus has replaced the ancestral anguimorph ZW system on LG7 with a novel ZW system on LG3. The linkage group, LG3, corresponds to chromosome 9 in chicken, and this is the first documented use of this syntenic block as a sex chromosome in amniotes. Additionally, this ~1 Mb region harbors approximately 10 genes, including a duplication of the sex-determining transcription factor, Foxl2, critical for the determination and maintenance of sexual differentiation in vertebrates, and thus a putative primary sex-determining gene for Shinisaurus.