What makes a man a man? Prenatal antennapedia expression is involved in the formation of the male phenotype in Daphnia.

摘要: Cyclic parthenogenetic organisms show a switch in reproductive strategy from asexual to sexual reproduction upon the occurrence of unfavourable environmental conditions. The mode involves production ameiotic diploid males and fertilization meiotic haploid eggs. One beautiful example for this between parthenogenesis is Daphnia. Male female Daphnia same clone are genetically identical. Morphological differences should therefore only be due differential gene expression. This expression leads sexually dimorphic phenotypes with elongated moveable (i.e. leg-like) first antennae comparison females. For other arthropods, it has been demonstrated that formation morphology legs regulation Hox antennapedia (antp). Here, we antp expressed during embryogenesis Daphnia, adults contain much lower amounts mRNA than eggs mothers were treated juvenile hormone methyl farnesoate (responsible male offspring) showed parthenogenetically produced We conclude involved molecular pathways inducing phenotype