Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Roggenbuck, Emma C.
• Hall, Elijah A.
• Hanson, Isabel B.
• Roby, Alyssa A.
• Zhang, Katherine K.
• Alkatib, Kyle A.
• Carter, Joseph A.
• Clewner, Jarred E.
• Gelfius, Anna L.
• Gong, Shiyuan
• Gordon, Finley R.
• Iseler, Jolene N.
• Kotapati, Samhita
• Li, Marilyn
• Maysun, Areeba
• McCormick, Elise O.
• Rastogi, Geetanjali
• Sengupta, Srijani
• Uzoma, Chantal U.
• Wolkov, Madison A.
• Clowney, E. Josephine

Titel

Let's talk about sex: Mechanisms of neural sexual differentiation in Bilateria

Ist Teil von

• Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Mechanisms of disease, 2024-03, Vol.16 (2), p.e1636-n/a

Ort / Verlag

Hoboken, USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc

Erscheinungsjahr

2024

Quelle

Wiley Online Library Journals Frontfile Complete

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• In multicellular organisms, sexed gonads have evolved that facilitate release of sperm versus eggs, and bilaterian animals purposefully combine their gametes via mating behaviors. Distinct neural circuits have evolved that control these physically different mating events for animals producing eggs from ovaries versus sperm from testis. In this review, we will describe the developmental mechanisms that sexually differentiate neural circuits across three major clades of bilaterian animals–Ecdysozoa, Deuterosomia, and Lophotrochozoa. While many of the mechanisms inducing somatic and neuronal sex differentiation across these diverse organisms are clade‐specific rather than evolutionarily conserved, we develop a common framework for considering the developmental logic of these events and the types of neuronal differences that produce sex‐differentiated behaviors. This article is categorized under: Congenital Diseases > Stem Cells and Development Neurological Diseases > Stem Cells and Development In many animals, sex differentiation of neural circuits involves two axes: Along the first axis, particular classes of neurons are specified to produce a sex‐sensitive factor; this specification event is sex‐neutral. Along the second axis, sex information is imposed on this sex‐sensitive factor, either through hormonal or cell‐autonomous mechanisms. The sex‐sensitive factors are typically transcription factors. Mechanisms that impose sex information on the sex‐sensitive factor can include binding of hormone ligands (e.g., steroid hormones binding nuclear receptors in vertebrates), conditional degradation of the transcription factor protein (e.g., in nematodes), or sex‐differentiated alternative splicing (as in fruit flies). The result is that particular neuronal classes have the capacity for sex‐sensitive transcriptional regulation. Downstream, sex‐sensitive transcription factors can alter neuronal number, anatomy, connectivity, and physiology to produce differences in circuits regulating diverse social behaviors.