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Sexual dimorphisms in trait expression are widespread among animals and are especially pronounced in ornaments and weapons of sexual selection, which can attain exaggerated sizes. Expression of exaggerated traits is usually male-specific and nutrition sensitive. Consequently, the developmental mechanisms generating sexually dimorphic growth and nutrition-dependent phenotypic plasticity are each likely to regulate the expression of extreme structures. Yet we know little about how either of these mechanisms work, much less how they might interact with each other. We investigated the developmental mechanisms of sex-specific mandible growth in the stag beetle Cyclommatus metallifer, focusing on doublesex gene function and its interaction with juvenile hormone (JH) signaling. doublesex genes encode transcription factors that orchestrate male and female specific trait development, and JH acts as a mediator between nutrition and mandible growth. We found that the Cmdsx gene regulates sex differentiation in the stag beetle. Knockdown of Cmdsx by RNA-interference in both males and females produced intersex phenotypes, indicating a role for Cmdsx in sex-specific trait growth. By combining knockdown of Cmdsx with JH treatment, we showed that female-specific splice variants of Cmdsx contribute to the insensitivity of female mandibles to JH: knockdown of Cmdsx reversed this pattern, so that mandibles in knockdown females were stimulated to grow by JH treatment. In contrast, mandibles in knockdown males retained some sensitivity to JH, though mandibles in these individuals did not attain the full sizes of wild type males. We suggest that moderate JH sensitivity of mandibular cells may be the default developmental state for both sexes, with sex-specific Dsx protein decreasing sensitivity in females, and increasing it in males. This study is the first to demonstrate a causal link between the sex determination and JH signaling pathways, which clearly interact to determine the developmental fates and final sizes of nutrition-dependent secondary-sexual characters.
Pubmed ID: 24453990 RIS Download
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Software package as multiple sequence alignment tool that uses seeded guide trees and HMM profile-profile techniques to generate alignments between three or more sequences. Accepts nucleic acid or protein sequences in multiple sequence formats NBRF/PIR, EMBL/UniProt, Pearson (FASTA), GDE, ALN/Clustal, GCG/MSF, RSF.
View all literature mentionsWeb search tool to find regions of similarity between biological sequences. Program compares nucleotide or protein sequences to sequence databases and calculates statistical significance. Used for identifying homologous sequences.
View all literature mentionsA portal to biomedical and genomic information. NCBI creates public databases, conducts research in computational biology, develops software tools for analyzing genome data, and disseminates biomedical information for the better understanding of molecular processes affecting human health and disease.
View all literature mentionsWeb application to search protein databases using a translated nucleotide query. Translated BLAST services are useful when trying to find homologous proteins to a nucleotide coding region. Blastx compares translational products of the nucleotide query sequence to a protein database. Because blastx translates the query sequence in all six reading frames and provides combined significance statistics for hits to different frames, it is particularly useful when the reading frame of the query sequence is unknown or it contains errors that may lead to frame shifts or other coding errors. Thus blastx is often the first analysis performed with a newly determined nucleotide sequence and is used extensively in analyzing EST sequences. This search is more sensitive than nucleotide blast since the comparison is performed at the protein level.
View all literature mentionsA collection of web tools designed to assist with the analysis of DNA microarray data and results. RACE performs probe level data preprocessing, quality checks, normalization, and visualization for Affymetrix GeneChips. In addition, it performs clustering and differential analysis of normalized expression levels or ratios for arbitrary platforms, and estimates the false discovery rates in lists of potentially regulated genes. A Gene Ontology (GO)-term analysis assists in the biological interpretation of gene lists. The user can customize each analysis request; upon submission the analysis is executed in a fully automated way.
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