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Sex-lethal

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IPR006546
Identifiers
SymbolSxl
InterProIPR006546
Alternative splicing of the Drosophila Transformer gene product.

Sex-lethal (Sxl) is a gene found in Dipteran insects, named for its mutation phenotype in Drosophila melanogaster (P19339).[1][2] It is most closely related to the ELAV/HUD subfamily of splicing factors.[3]

In fruit flies, this protein participates in alternative splicing of the transformer gene, deciding the sex of the fly.[4] It induces female-specific alternative splicing of the transformer (tra) pre-mRNA by binding to the tra uridine-rich polypyrimidine tract at the non-sex-specific 3' splice site during the sex-determination process. SXL binds also to its own pre-mRNA and promotes female-specific alternative splicing.[5][6] SXL contains an N-terminal Gly/Asn-rich domain that may be responsible for the protein-protein interaction, and tandem RNA recognition motifs (RRMs) that show high preference to bind single-stranded, uridine-rich target RNA transcripts.[7]

References

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  1. ^ Maine EM, Salz HK, Cline TW, Schedl P (December 1985). "The Sex-lethal gene of Drosophila: DNA alterations associated with sex-specific lethal mutations". Cell. 43 (2 Pt 1): 521–9. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(85)90181-3. PMID 3000609. S2CID 32594881.
  2. ^ Meise M, Hilfiker-Kleiner D, Dübendorfer A, Brunner C, Nöthiger R, Bopp D (April 1998). "Sex-lethal, the master sex-determining gene in Drosophila, is not sex-specifically regulated in Musca domestica" (PDF). Development. 125 (8): 1487–94. doi:10.1242/dev.125.8.1487. PMID 9502729.
  3. ^ Schütt C, Nöthiger R (February 2000). "Structure, function and evolution of sex-determining systems in Dipteran insects". Development. 127 (4): 667–77. doi:10.1242/dev.127.4.667. PMID 10648226.
  4. ^ Bell LR, Maine EM, Schedl P, Cline TW (December 1988). "Sex-lethal, a Drosophila sex determination switch gene, exhibits sex-specific RNA splicing and sequence similarity to RNA binding proteins". Cell. 55 (6): 1037–46. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(88)90248-6. PMID 3144435. S2CID 22691059.
  5. ^ Crowder SM, Kanaar R, Rio DC, Alber T (April 1999). "Absence of interdomain contacts in the crystal structure of the RNA recognition motifs of Sex-lethal". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 96 (9): 4892–7. Bibcode:1999PNAS...96.4892C. doi:10.1073/pnas.96.9.4892. PMC 21787. PMID 10220389.
  6. ^ Penalva LO, Sánchez L (September 2003). "RNA binding protein sex-lethal (Sxl) and control of Drosophila sex determination and dosage compensation". Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews. 67 (3): 343–59, table of contents. doi:10.1128/mmbr.67.3.343-359.2003. PMC 193869. PMID 12966139.
  7. ^ Samuels M, Deshpande G, Schedl P (June 1998). "Activities of the Sex-lethal protein in RNA binding and protein:protein interactions". Nucleic Acids Research. 26 (11): 2625–37. doi:10.1093/nar/26.11.2625. PMC 147605. PMID 9592147.
This article incorporates text from the public domain Pfam and InterPro: IPR006546