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Australia: The Land Where Time Began |
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Dictyostelium discoideum
– Sex Determination in a Social Amoeba (slime mould) In many organisms the genetics of sex determination
has remained mysterious, even in some that have been in other ways well
studied. In this paper Bloomfield et
al. report the discovery and
analysis of the mating-type locus in the model organism
Dictyostelium discoideum.
This species has 3 mating types, all of which are specified by forms of
a single genetic locus: 2 versions of the locus differ entirely in
sequence, the 3rd resembling a composite of the other 2.
Single genes that are unrelated are enough to determine 2 of the mating
types, while the homologues of both these genes are required in the
composite type. Polypeptides with no recognised similarity to
established protein families are encoded by the key genes. It therefore
appears that in social amoebae determination of sex uses regulators that
are not related to any others that currently known.
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Author: M.H.Monroe Email: admin@austhrutime.com Sources & Further reading |