ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2013
Drosophila switch gene Sex-lethal can bypass its switch-gene target transformer to regulate aspects of female behavior.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
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21 citing papers in PubMed, 37 citations in OpenAlex.
- Sex-biased expression of enteroendocrine cell-derived hormones contributes to higher fat storage ineLife · 2026Article
- Neuronal protein Sex-lethal modulates tRNA synthesis via the polymerase III subunit Polr3E in male Drosophila neurons.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- The sex of organ geometry.Nature · 2024Article
- Finishing the egg.Genetics · 2024Article
- Sex-lethal regulates back-splicing and generation of the sex-differentially expressed circular RNAs.Nucleic acids research · 2023Article
- Sex Lethal Gene Manipulates Gonadal Development of Medaka,International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Article
- Noncanonical function of the Sex lethal gene controls the protogyny phenotype in Drosophila melanogaster.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- The Regulation of Germline Sex Determination in Drosophila by Sex lethal.Sexual development : genetics, molecular biology, evolution, endocrinology, embryology, and pathology of sex determination and differentiation · 2022Review
- Interplay between sex determination cascade and major signaling pathways during Drosophila eye development: Perspectives for future research.Developmental biology · 2021Review
- Genomic and cDNA selection-amplification identifies transcriptome-wide binding sites for the Drosophila protein sex-lethal.PloS one · 2021Article
- Gtsf1 is essential for proper female sex determination and transposon silencing in the silkworm, Bombyx mori.PLoS genetics · 2020Article
- Transcriptome Analysis of the Oriental Fruit FlyInsects · 2020Article
- Chinmo prevents transformer alternative splicing to maintain male sex identity.PLoS genetics · 2018Article
- Article
- The sex of specific neurons controls female body growth in Drosophila.PLoS biology · 2017Article
- Article
- Bombyx mori P-element Somatic Inhibitor (BmPSI) Is a Key Auxiliary Factor for Silkworm Male Sex Determination.PLoS genetics · 2017Article
- Wolbachia Endosymbionts Modify Drosophila Ovary Protein Levels in a Context-Dependent Manner.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2016Article
- Article
- The Sex Determination Gene transformer Regulates Male-Female Differences in Drosophila Body Size.PLoS genetics · 2015Article
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2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
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Abstract
The switch gene Sex-lethal (Sxl) was thought to elicit all aspects of Drosophila female somatic differentiation other than size dimorphism by controlling only the switch gene transformer (tra). Here we show instead that Sxl controls an aspect of female sexual behavior by acting on a target other than or in addition to tra. We inferred the existence of this unknown Sxl target from the observation that a constitutively feminizing tra transgene that restores fertility to tra(-) females failed to restore fertility to Sxl-mutant females that were adult viable but functionally tra(-). The sterility of these mutant females was caused by an ovulation failure. Because tra expression is not sufficient to render these Sxl-mutant females fertile, we refer to this pathway as the tra-insufficient feminization (TIF) branch of the sex-determination regulatory pathway. Using a transgene that conditionally expresses two Sxl feminizing isoforms, we find that the TIF branch is required developmentally for neurons that also sex-specifically express fruitless, a tra gene target controlling sexual behavior. Thus, in a subset of fruitless neurons, targets of the TIF and tra pathways appear to collaborate to control ovulation. In most insects, Sxl has no sex-specific functions, and tra, rather than Sxl, is both the target of the primary sex signal and the gene that maintains the female developmental commitment via positive autoregulation. The TIF pathway may represent an ancestral female-specific function acquired by Sxl in an early evolutionary step toward its becoming the regulator of tra in Drosophila.
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