Abstract
Author SummarySexual differentiation is a fundamental process in the animal kingdom, and different species have evolved a bewildering diversity of mechanisms to generate the two sexes in the proper proportions. Sex determination in honeybees (Apis mellifera) provides an interesting and unusual system to study, as it is governed by heterozygosity of a single locus harbouring the complementary sex determiner gene (csd), in contrast to the well-studied sex chromosome system of Drosophila melanogaster. We show that the female sex determination pathway is exclusively induced by the csd gene in early embryogenesis. Later on and throughout development this inductive signal is maintained via a positive feedback loop of the feminizer (fem) gene, in which the Fem protein mediates its own synthesis. The findings reveal how the sex determination process in honeybees is realized by the regulation and function of two genes differing from Drosophila.
Highlights
In 1845 Dzierzon reported that the sex in the honeybee (Apis mellifera) is determined by the fertilization and non-fertilization of eggs [1], and this was more than 50 years before the discovery of sex chromosomes [2,3]
Sexual differentiation is a fundamental process in the animal kingdom, and different species have evolved a bewildering diversity of mechanisms to generate the two sexes in the proper proportions
Sex determination in honeybees (Apis mellifera) provides an interesting and unusual system to study, as it is governed by heterozygosity of a single locus harbouring the complementary sex determiner gene, in contrast to the well-studied sex chromosome system of Drosophila melanogaster
Summary
In 1845 Dzierzon reported that the sex in the honeybee (Apis mellifera) is determined by the fertilization and non-fertilization of eggs [1], and this was more than 50 years before the discovery of sex chromosomes [2,3]. Dzierzon’s key observation was that a virgin queen that has not taken a mating flight (queens mate only while in free flight away from nest) produces only male progeny From this result he inferred that unfertilized eggs develop into males, whereas fertilized eggs differentiate into queens and worker bees, which was later confirmed by cytological studies [4]. Neither the fertilization process nor the haploid or diploid state of the eggs provides the sex determination signal in honeybees This is shown by the regular occurrence of males in inbred crosses that are derived from diploid, fertilized eggs [6,7,8,9]. Fertile males are produced by the queen’s unfertilized, haploid eggs that are hemizygous at SDL
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