Dramatically diverse S. pombe wtf meiotic drivers all display high gamete-killing efficiency

Meiotic drivers are selfish genetic loci that force their transmission into more than 50% of the viable gametes made by heterozygotes. Meiotic drivers are known to cause infertility in a diverse range of eukaryotes and are predicted to affect the evolution of genome structure and meiosis. The gene family of includes both meiotic drivers and drive suppressors and thus offers a tractable model organism to study drive systems. Currently, only a handful of genes have been functionally characterized and those genes only partially reflect the diversity of the gene family. In this work, we functionally test 22 additional genes. We identify eight new drivers that share between 30-90% amino acid identity with previously characterized drivers. Despite the vast divergence between these genes, they generally drive into >85% gametes when heterozygous. We also find three new genes that suppress drive, including two that also act as autonomous drivers. Additionally, we find that genes do not underlie a weak (64%) transmission bias caused by a locus or loci on chromosome 1. Finally, we find that some Wtf proteins have expression or localization patterns that are distinct from the poison and antidote proteins encoded by drivers and suppressors, suggesting some genes may have non-meiotic drive functions. Overall, this work expands our understanding of the gene family and the burden selfish driver genes impose on .