Aspects of Dosage Compensation and Sex Determination in Caenorhabditis elegans
- W.B. Wood,
- P. Meneely*,
- P. Schedin, and
- L. Donahue
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
Excerpt
The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has two sexes, hermaphrodites and males. Hermaphrodites normally have two X chromosomes (XX or 2X) and males have only one (X0 or 1X). There is no Y chromosome, and sex is determined by the X/A ratio, i.e., the ratio of X chromosomes to sets of autosomes (Nigon 1949; Madl and Herman 1979). The X/A ratio acts to determine sex through a set of at least seven interacting autosomal genes, which have been defined, characterized, and shown to act as a regulatory pathway, primarily by Hodgkin and co-workers (Hodgkin and Brenner 1977; Hodgkin 1980; Doniach and Hodgkin 1984; Kimble et al. 1984; Hodgkin, this volume). The first gene in the pathway, her-1, acts through five intervening genes to regulate the major switch gene tra-1, whose activity determines somatic sexual development. At an X/A ratio of 1.0, her-1 activity is low and tra-1 activity is high, leading to...
