CGC Bibliography Paper 5464

The remarkable ubiquity of DM domain factors as regulators of sexual phenotype: ancestry or aptitude?

Hodgkin J

Medline:

12231620

Citation:

Genes & Development 16: 2322-2326 2002

Type:

REVIEW

Genes:

mab-3 mab-23 tra-1

Abstract:

The CM domain is a cysteine-rich DNA-binding motif first recognized in proteins encoded by the Drosophila set determination gene doublesex (Erdman and Burtis 1993; Zhu et al. 2000). As the name doublesex (dsx) suggests, this gene has functions in both sexes: Its transcripts undergo sex-specific alternative splicing, so that it can encode either a male-specific isoform, DSX(M), or a female-specific isoform, DSX(F) (Baker and Wolfner 1988; Burtis and Baker 1989). These proteins have the same N-terminal DNA-binding domain, but different C termini that confer different regulatory properties on the two forms. The expression of DSX(M) directs male development, and the expression of DSX(F) directs female development, throughout most of the somatic tissues of the fruit fly.