Response of protein coding genes and microRNAs to temperature changes in four species of drosophilids

Insects are the most abundant described living animals in the world, and they play important roles in the environment and in human society. Climate change affects global biodiversity, and studying temperature-dependent effects on insects is relevant to understanding the impact of climate crisis. However, little is known relating to how climate affects gene expression in different sexes of insects. Here, we utilised four species of fruit flies Drosophila (D. melanogaster, D. virilis, D. pseudoobscura, and D. erecta), with the male and female flies of each species subjected to three different temperatures to test their gene expression responses. In the transcriptomic profiles of protein-coding genes and microRNAs generated in this study, we showed that under the same temperature, there are more male-biased than female-biased protein-coding genes and microRNAs in all four investigated drosophilid species. Interestingly, upon temperature changes, there were more differentially expressed protein-coding genes in females than males in all four investigated species, while the responses of microRNAs are highly species- and sexes- specific. This study showed that protein-coding genes and microRNAs have undergone different selection between sexes during drosophilids evolution.