Global regulation of X chromosomal genes by the MSL complex in Drosophila melanogaster
Abstract
A long-standing model postulates that X-chromosome dosage compensation in Drosophila occurs by twofold up-regulation of the single male X, but previous data cannot exclude an alternative model, in which male autosomes are down-regulated to balance gene expression. To distinguish between the two models, we used RNA interference to deplete Male-Specific Lethal (MSL) complexes from male-like tissue culture cells. We found that expression of many genes from the X chromosome decreased, while expression from the autosomes was largely unchanged. We conclude that the primary role of the MSL complex is to up-regulate the male X chromosome.
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Footnotes
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Supplemental material is available at http://www.genesdev.org.
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Article and publication are at http://www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.1343705.
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↵5 These authors contributed equally to this work.
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↵6 Corresponding author.
↵6 E-MAIL mkuroda{at}genetics.med.harvard.edu; FAX (617) 525-4522.
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- Accepted August 2, 2005.
- Received June 13, 2005.
- Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
