Sexual dimorphism is the most striking naturally occurring phenotypic variation that is a direct outcome of a simple Mendelian segregation. Molecular genetic dissection of mechanisms underlying sexual development in organisms ranging from flies to humans has been a subject of extensive research during the last two decades. Our knowledge about the genetic regulatory machinery that underlies sex determination and differentiation has gone farthest in flies. Nearly, eighty years after discovery of the chromosomal basis of sex determination in flies, we are now in a position to understand how the sex-determining signal works at the molecular level.
展开▼
