Abstract
Animals have evolved a bewildering diversity of mechanisms to determine the two sexes. Studies of sex determination genes – their history and function – in non-model insects and Drosophila have allowed us to begin to understand the generation of sex determination diversity. One common theme from these studies is that evolved mechanisms produce activities in either males or females to control a shared gene switch that regulates sexual development. Only a few small-scale changes in existing and duplicated genes are sufficient to generate large differences in sex determination systems. This review summarises recent findings in insects, surveys evidence of how and why sex determination mechanisms can change rapidly and suggests fruitful areas of future research.
Highlights
The regulation and evolution of sexual development have long been of central interest in developmental and evolutionary biology
The key questions we address in this paper are: (i) How are differences in sex determination molecularly realized; (ii) how did differences in sex determination evolve from a pre-existing genetic repertoire; (iii) what forces drive sex determination systems to diverge?
Gain-of-function alleles of tra, the double dose of X-linked transcription factors that activate Sxl, or Csd proteins derived from a heterozygous csd gene are the molecular signals of diverse sex determination mechanisms, such as a dominant femaledetermining system, an X:A ratio and a complementary sex determination system
Summary
Animals have evolved a bewildering diversity of mechanisms to determine the two sexes. Studies of sex determination genes – their history and function – in nonmodel insects and Drosophila have allowed us to begin to understand the generation of sex determination diversity. One common theme from these studies is that evolved mechanisms produce activities in either males or females to control a shared gene switch that regulates sexual development. A few small-scale changes in existing and duplicated genes are sufficient to generate large differences in sex determination systems. This review summarises recent findings in insects, surveys evidence of how and why sex determination mechanisms can change rapidly and suggests fruitful areas of
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