Sex Reversal: Deletion Mapping the Male-determining Function of the Human Y Chromosome
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
Excerpt
The Developmental Genetics of Sex Differentiation
Mammalian molecular geneticists face the challenge of understanding how a fertilized egg develops into a mature organism, with all of its complex organ systems. Much has been learned about the molecular correlates of differentiation in, for example, hematopoietic cell lineages, but the molecular mechanisms of the development of mammalian organ systems remain virtually unexplored.
In mammals, the reproductive tract will undoubtedly prove to be among the organ systems most amenable to developmental genetic studies. Consider the invertebrates, where developmental genetics has been pursued with greatest success in Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly) and Caenorhabditis elegans (nematode). It is no mere coincidence that, in both fruit fly and nematode, the best understood developmental pathway is sex differentiation (Belote et al. 1985; Hodgkin et al. 1985; Maine et al. 1985; Nothiger and Steinmann-Zwicky 1985). The reasons are twofold and they apply to mammals as well as to...
