Publication Date:
1999-06-12
Description:
In many organisms, master control genes coordinately regulate sex-specific aspects of development. SDC-2 was shown to induce hermaphrodite sexual differentiation and activate X chromosome dosage compensation in Caenorhabditis elegans. To control these distinct processes, SDC-2 acts as a strong gene-specific repressor and a weaker chromosome-wide repressor. To initiate hermaphrodite development, SDC-2 associates with the promoter of the male sex-determining gene her-1 to repress its transcription. To activate dosage compensation, SDC-2 triggers assembly of a specialized protein complex exclusively on hermaphrodite X chromosomes to reduce gene expression by half. SDC-2 can localize to X chromosomes without other components of the dosage compensation complex, suggesting that SDC-2 targets dosage compensation machinery to X chromosomes.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Dawes, H E -- Berlin, D S -- Lapidus, D M -- Nusbaum, C -- Davis, T L -- Meyer, B J -- GM30702/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ -- T32 GM07127/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 1999 Jun 11;284(5421):1800-4.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3204, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10364546" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Caenorhabditis elegans/embryology/*genetics/physiology
;
*Caenorhabditis elegans Proteins
;
*DNA-Binding Proteins
;
Disorders of Sex Development
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*Dosage Compensation, Genetic
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Female
;
Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental
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Genes, Helminth
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Helminth Proteins/genetics/*physiology
;
Male
;
Molecular Sequence Data
;
Mutation
;
Promoter Regions, Genetic
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Repressor Proteins/genetics/*physiology
;
*Sex Determination Processes
;
Transgenes
;
X Chromosome/genetics/*metabolism
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
