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Dosage Compensation in Drosophila (Asifa Akhtar)
Episode 11
July 16, 2019
For many organisms, from fruit flies to humans, sex is determined by the number of X chromosomes. Females often have two copies of the X and males have one, creating an imbalance in the number of X chromosome genes present in each sex. Different organisms have evolved different strategies for how to cope with this imbalance. For example, in humans, one of the two X chromosomes in every female cell is randomly inactivated, leaving both males and females with one active X chromosome each. However, in Drosophila, the balance is achieved by males overexpressing the genes on their single X chromosome two-fold to bring up the levels of gene expression to match expression from the two X chromosomes in females. Essentially the same end result is achieved in both humans and Drosophila, balanced levels of X chromosome transcription in both males and females, but using two extremely different mechanisms.
In this episode, our guest Dr. Asifa Akhtar, Senior Group Leader and Director at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg, Germany, discussed her lab's recent work on dosage compensation in Drosophila melanogaster. Dr. Akhtar talked about how the MSL complex, and the histone acetyltransferase MOF in particular, contributes to the regulation of the dosage compensation process. Furthermore, she also talked about some potential functions of the conserved MSL proteins in humans and how they are similar to and different from their fruit fly counterparts.
Check out our blog post to learn more.
