Monotreme sex chromosomes – implications for the evolution of amniote sex chromosomes
Paul D. Waters A B and Jennifer A. Marshall Graves A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A Comparative Genomics Group, Research School of Biological Sciences, School of Biology, The Australian National University, GPO Box 475, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.
B Corresponding author. Email: paul.waters@anu.edu.au
Reproduction, Fertility and Development 21(8) 943-951 https://doi.org/10.1071/RD09250
Submitted: 5 May 2009 Accepted: 13 July 2009 Published: 30 October 2009
Abstract
In vertebrates, a highly conserved pathway of genetic events controls male and female development, to the extent that many genes involved in human sex determination are also involved in fish sex determination. Surprisingly, the master switch to this pathway, which intuitively could be considered the most critical step, is inconsistent between vertebrate taxa. Interspersed in the vertebrate tree there are species that determine sex by environmental cues such as the temperature at which eggs are incubated, and then there are genetic sex-determination systems, with male heterogametic species (XY systems) and female heterogametic species (ZW systems), some of which have heteromorphic, and others homomorphic, sex chromosomes. This plasticity of sex-determining switches in vertebrates has made tracking the events of sex chromosome evolution in amniotes a daunting task, but comparative gene mapping is beginning to reveal some striking similarities across even distant taxa. In particular, the recent completion of the platypus genome sequence has completely changed our understanding of when the therian mammal X and Y chromosomes first arose (they are up to 150 million years younger than previously thought) and has also revealed the unexpected insight that sex determination of the amniote ancestor might have been controlled by a bird-like ZW system.
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