Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Sci. STKE, 20 March 2001
Vol. 2001, Issue 74, p. tw9
[DOI: 10.1126/scisignal.742001tw9]

EDITORS' CHOICE

Sex Determination Physical Attraction of TRA-1 and TRA-2

The worm Caenorhabditis elegans is a hermaphroditic organism when genotypically XX. Male animals, which do not produce oocytes and which have masculinized morphology, are genetically X0, i.e., they have only one copy of the X chromosome. Two different pathways of sexual determination with several common components control somatic cell sexual characteristics and germ-cell sexual characteristics. One component common to both tissues is the TRA-2 gene, which expresses two proteins. One of these is TRA-2A, a membrane protein, which can be cleaved to release the intracelluar domain (TRA-2Aic), which, in oocytes, can also be directly transcribed from the TRA-2 gene. Wang and Kimble identified a physical interaction between TRA-2ic and TRA-1, a transcription factor that promotes feminization in somatic tissues and masculinization in germ cells. This unexpected physical interaction may provide a mechanism for regulating the different tissue responses that rely on the same components. The importance of this interaction in the specification of germ-cell sexual fate and the lack of a role for this interaction in somatic-cell sexual fate was demonstrated by using genetic interactions in C. elegans.

S. Wang, J. Kimble, The TRA-1 transcription factor binds TRA-2 to regulate sexual fates in Caenorhabditis elegans. EMBO J. 20, 1363-1372 (2001). [Abstract] [Full Text]

Citation: Physical Attraction of TRA-1 and TRA-2. Sci. STKE 2001, tw9 (2001).

To Advertise     Find Products

Science Signaling. ISSN 1937-9145 (online), 1945-0877 (print). Pre-2008: Science's STKE. ISSN 1525-8882