Concentration of maternal BICOID (BCD) establishes the anterior pattern in the Drosophila embryo. Successive deletions in the bcd promoter allowed us to localize an enhancer sequence in the 5'-UTR and a down-regulating element downstream of the ATG initiator codon, and identify a 49 bp region sufficient to drive transcription of a reporter gene specifically in nurse cells. This fragment contain...

The main factor influencing sex determination of an embryo is the sex-determining region Y (SRY), a master regulatory gene located on the Y chromosome. The presence of SRY causes the bipotential gonad to differentiate into a testis. However, some individuals carry a Y chromosome but are phenotypically female (46,XY females) or have a female karyotype but are phenotypically male (46,XX males). 4...

background: in human, sry (sex-determining region of the y chromosome) is the major gene for the testis-determining factor which is found in normal xy males and in the rare xx males, and it is absent in normal xx females and many xy females. there are several methods which can indicate a male genotype by the presence of the amplified product of sry gene. the aim of this study was to identify th...

In mammals, Sry (sex-determining region Y gene) is the master regulator of male sex determination. The discovery of Sry in 1990 was expected to provide the key to unravelling the network of gene regulation underlying testis development. Intriguingly, no target gene of SRY protein has yet been discovered, and the mechanisms by which it mediates its developmental functions are still elusive. What...

The Sry (sex determining region, Y chromosome) open reading frame from mice representing four species of the genus Mus was sequenced in an effort to understand the conditional dysfunction of some M. domesticus Sry alleles when present on the C57BL/6J inbred strain genetic background and to delimit the functionally important protein regions. Twenty-two Sry alleles were sequenced, most from wild-...

In mammals, the primary step in male sex determination is the initiation of testis development which depends on the expression of the Y-linked testis determining gene, Sry. The mechanisms by which Sry controls this process are unknown. Studies showed that cell migration from the adjacent mesonephros only occurs into XY gonads; however, it was not known whether this effect depended on Sry, anoth...

Outbred XY(Sry-) female mice that lack Sry due to the 11 kb deletion Sry(dl1Rlb) have very limited fertility. However, five lines of outbred XY(d) females with Y chromosome deletions Y(Del(Y)1Ct)-Y(Del(Y)5Ct) that deplete the Rbmy gene cluster and repress Sry transcription were found to be of good fertility. Here we tested our expectation that the difference in fertility between XO, XY(d-1) and...

The Y chromosome of the spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR) contains a genetic component that raises blood pressure compared with the Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) Y chromosome. This research tests the Sry gene complex as the hypertensive component of the SHR Y chromosome. The Sry loci were sequenced in 1 strain with a hypertensive Y chromosome (SHR/Akr) and 2 strains with a normotensive Y chromosome (SH...

Histone H3 lysine 9 (H3K9) methylation is a hallmark of heterochromatin. H3K9 demethylation is crucial in mouse sex determination; The H3K9 demethylase Jmjd1a deficiency leads to increased H3K9 methylation at the Sry locus in embryonic gonads, thereby compromising Sry expression and causing male-to-female sex reversal. We hypothesized that the H3K9 methylation level at the Sry locus is finely t...

BACKGROUND Our laboratory has shown that a locus on the SHR Y chromosome increases blood pressure (BP) in the SHR rat and in WKY rats that had the SHR Y chromosome locus crossed into their genome (SHR/y rat). A potential candidate for this Y chromosome hypertension locus is Sry, a gene that encodes a transcription factor that is responsible for testes development and the Sry protein may affect ...