Molecular genetic aspects of sex determination in Drosophila melanogaster

Abstract

The molecular analyses of three of the regulatory genes (transformer (tra), doublesex (dsx), and transformer-2 (tra-2)) controlling sexual differentiation in Drosophila have demonstrated that the control of RNA processing has a major role in regulating somatic sexual differentiation. The activities of both the tra and dsx genes are controlled at the level of RNA processing. In the case of tra the use of different splice acceptor sites results in a functional transcript being produced only in females, whereas at dsx the use of different splice acceptor sites in the two sexes results in the production of transcripts that encode different proteins in males and females. The tra-2 gene has been shown to be necessary for the processing of the dsx pre-mRNA in females and the conceptual translation of a tra-2 cDNA shows that it encodes a protein with similarity to a family of RNA-binding proteins which includes known splicesome components. We previously suggested that the pattern of sexual differentiation and dosage compensation characteristic of a male was a default regulatory state. The findings reviewed here provide a molecular basis for this default expression in males as well as an insight into how females differ from males in control of the expression of these genes. For both the tra and dsx genes the molecular basis of their male (default) state of expression appears to be the processing of their transcripts by the housekeeping RNA splicing machinery. In females the specification of the alternative pattern of splicing at both tra and dsx is by the sex determination regulatory genes that function upstream of them in this regulatory cascade. It seems likely that the activities of these sex determination regulatory genes in females do not provide all of the information that is necessary for proper splicing of the transcripts of the genes downstream of them. Rather we imagine that the products of the Sxl, tra, and tra-2 genes are acting to impose a specificity on the basic cellular splicing machinery.Key words: Drosophila melanogaster, sex determination, sexual differentiation.