Extraordinary variability in gene activation and repression programs during gonadal sex differentiation across vertebrates.

ABSTRACT: Genes involved in gonadal sex differentiation have been traditionally thought to be fairly conserved across vertebrates, but this has been lately questioned. Here, we performed the first comparative analysis of gonadal transcriptomes across vertebrates, from fish to mammals. Our results unambiguously show an extraordinary overall variability in gene activation and repression programs without a phylogenetic pattern. During sex differentiation, genes such as dmrt1, sox9, amh, cyp19a and foxl2 were consistently either male- or female-enriched across species while many genes with the greatest expression change within each sex were not. We also found that downregulation in the opposite sex, which had only been quantified in the mouse model, was also prominent

SUBMITTER: Sanchez-Baizan N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10844511 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature