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Cis-regulatory variation in relation to sex and sexual dimorphism in Drosophila melanogaster

Much of sexual dimorphism is likely due to sex-biased gene expression, which results from differential regulation of a genome that is largely shared between males and females. Here we use allele-specific expression to explore cis-regulatory variation in Drosophila melanogaster in relation to sex. We test for sex differences in cis-regulatory effects as well as examine patterns of cis-regulatory with respect to two other levels of variation in sexual dimorphism: (i) across genes varying in their degree of sex-biased expression, and (ii) among tissues that vary in their degree of dimorphism (e.g., relatively low dimorphism in heads vs high dimorphism in gonads). We uncover evidence of widespread cis-regulatory variation in all tissues examined, with female-biased genes being especially enriched for said variation. A sizeable proportion of cis-regulatory variation is observed to have sex-specific effects, with sex-dependent cis effects being more frequent in gonads than in heads. Finally, we detect some genes with reversed allelic imbalance between the sexes. Such variants could provide a mechanism for sex-specific dominance reversals, a phenomenon important for sexually antagonistic balancing selection.