In insects, sex determination is cell autonomous. That is, a single cell determines its sex independently following its own chromosome constitution. Thus, it has long been assumed that every cell is either male or female. The following paper demonstrates that this is not the case. The spatio-temporal expression of sex determining genes clearly shows that many of the cells are not sexually differentiated and only a portion of the cells (particularly those that display sexually dimorphic morphology) are sexually differentiated. This is a more complex system than we expected. Would an integrated understanding of sex determination across animal kingdom be possible?
- Robinett CC, Vaughan AG, Knapp J-M, Baker BS (2010) Sex and the single cell. II. There is a time and place for sex. PLoS Biology 8: e1000365. [link]
