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On the Form and Origins of the Bizarre Sex Chromosomal System of the Mandarin Vole.

Scott William Roy
Published in: The Journal of heredity (2021)
Recent work has illuminated the bizarre sex chromosomal system of the mandarin vole, Lasiopodomys mandarinus. The ancestral sex chromosomes have been replaced by 4 neo-sex chromosomes. These sex chromosomes show non-Mendelian inheritance and epistatic sex determination, as well as unaccounted-for karyotype frequencies. I suggest a model to account for the complex observed inheritance patterns. The proposed model combines putative adaptations previously observed in rodents, including feminizing X chromosomes and Y-biased spermatogenesis, with a novel proposed mechanism of genomic imprinting of X-linked genes during oogenesis in XY females. Alternative possibilities are also discussed. The proposed scenario provides a relatively simple and testable model for the function and origins of a remarkably complex mammalian sex chromosomal system.
Keyphrases
  • copy number
  • genome wide
  • high intensity
  • transcription factor
  • molecularly imprinted
  • solid phase extraction