Co-option of Sox3 as the male-determining factor on the Y chromosome in the fish Oryzias dancena

Yusuke Takehana, Masaru Matsuda, Taijun Myosho, Maximiliano L. Suster, Koichi Kawakami, Tadasu Shin-I, Yuji Kohara, Yoko Kuroki, Atsushi Toyoda, Asao Fujiyama, Satoshi Hamaguchi, Mitsuru Sakaizumi () and Kiyoshi Naruse ()
Additional contact information
Yusuke Takehana: Laboratory of Bioresources, National Institute for Basic Biology
Masaru Matsuda: Center for Bioscience Research and Education, Utsunomiya University, Utsunomiya
Taijun Myosho: Institute of Science and Technology, Niigata University
Maximiliano L. Suster: Neural Circuits and Behaviour Group, Uni Research AS
Koichi Kawakami: National Institute of Genetics
Tadasu Shin-I: Center for Genetic Resource Information, National Institute of Genetics
Yuji Kohara: Center for Genetic Resource Information, National Institute of Genetics
Yoko Kuroki: Tohoku Medical Megabank Organization
Atsushi Toyoda: the Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI)
Asao Fujiyama: the Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI)
Satoshi Hamaguchi: Institute of Science and Technology, Niigata University
Mitsuru Sakaizumi: Institute of Science and Technology, Niigata University
Kiyoshi Naruse: Laboratory of Bioresources, National Institute for Basic Biology

Nature Communications, 2014, vol. 5, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Sex chromosomes harbour a primary sex-determining signal that triggers sexual development of the organism. However, diverse sex chromosome systems have been evolved in vertebrates. Here we use positional cloning to identify the sex-determining locus of a medaka-related fish, Oryzias dancena, and find that the locus on the Y chromosome contains a cis-regulatory element that upregulates neighbouring Sox3 expression in developing gonad. Sex-reversed phenotypes in Sox3Y transgenic fish, and Sox3Y loss-of-function mutants all point to its critical role in sex determination. Furthermore, we demonstrate that Sox3 initiates testicular differentiation by upregulating expression of downstream Gsdf, which is highly conserved in fish sex differentiation pathways. Our results not only provide strong evidence for the independent recruitment of Sox3 to male determination in distantly related vertebrates, but also provide direct evidence that a novel sex determination pathway has evolved through co-option of a transcriptional regulator potentially interacted with a conserved downstream component.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms5157 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:5:y:2014:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms5157

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms5157

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().