Genome-wide analysis of sex-enriched gene expression during C. elegans larval development

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• 作者：Kara Thoemke ; Woelsung Yi ; Jennifer M. Ross ; Shinseog Kim ; Valerie Reinke and David Zarkower
• 关键词：Sex determination ; Sex-enriched ; Sexual dimorphism ; tra-1 ; C. elegans
• 刊名：Developmental Biology
• 出版年：2005
• 出版时间：2005
• 年：2005
• 卷：284
• 期：2
• 页码：500-508
• 全文大小：287 K

文摘

Sex determination in C. elegans is controlled by the TRA-1 zinc finger protein, a Ci/GLI homolog that promotes female cell fates throughout the body. The regulatory hierarchy that controls TRA-1 is well established, but the downstream effectors that establish sexual dimorphism during larval development remain largely unknown. Here, we describe the use of cDNA microarrays to identify sex-enriched transcripts expressed during three stages of C. elegans larval development. By excluding previously identified germline-enriched transcripts, we focused on somatic sexual development. This approach identified a large number of sex-enriched transcripts that are good candidates to encode regulators of somatic sexual development. We found little overlap between genes with sex-enriched expression in early versus late larval development, indicating that distinct sexual regulatory programs operate at these times. Genes with sex-enriched expression are found throughout the genome, with no strong bias between autosomes and X chromosomes. Reporter gene analysis revealed that these genes are expressed in highly specific patterns in a variety of sexually dimorphic cells. We searched for TRA-1 consensus DNA binding sites near genes with sex-enriched expression, and found that most strongly sex-enriched mRNAs are likely to be regulated indirectly by TRA-1. These results suggest that TRA-1 controls sexual dimorphism through a small number of intermediary regulators rather than by acting directly on the full constellation of genes involved in sex-specific differentiation.