Genetic and Molecular Analysis of fox-1, a Numerator Element Involved in Caenorhabditis elegans Primary Sex Determination

Genetic and Molecular Analysis of fox-1, a Numerator Element Involved in Caenorhabditis elegans Primary Sex Determination

Magdalena Skipper^a, Catherine A. Milne^a, and Jonathan Hodgkin^a
^a Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, CB2 2QH, England

Corresponding author: Jonathan Hodgkin, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Hills Rd., Cambridge, CB2 2QH, England., jah{at}mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk (E-mail)

Communicating editor: R. K. HERMAN

fox-1 was previously identified as a candidate numerator elementbased on its overexpression phenotype. FOX-1 is an RRM-typeRNA-binding protein, which can bind RNAs in vitro. Western analysisdetects FOX-1 throughout development. fox-1::lacZ comes on ubiquitouslyearly during embryogenesis. Postembryonically, fox-1::lacZ isexpressed sex specifically in a subset of cells in the headand tail. We describe a Tc1-derived deletion allele [fox-1( ${Delta}$ )]that removes the RRM domain. fox-1( ${Delta}$ ) confers no phenotype inXXs, but can rescue XO-specific lethality and feminization causedby duplications of the left end of the X. fox-1( ${Delta}$ ) synergizeswith putative numerators, resulting in abnormal XX development.Genetic analysis indicated that fox-1( ${Delta}$ ) leads to a slight increasein xol-1 activity, while fox-1(gf) leads to partial loss ofxol-1 activity, and xol-1 is epistatic to fox-1. RNase protectionexperiments revealed increased levels of the 2.2-kb xol-1 messagein fox-1( ${Delta}$ ) animals, and reduced levels in fox-1(gf) animals.Additionally, fox-1( ${Delta}$ ) impairs male mating efficiency, which,we propose, represents another function of fox-1, independentof xol-1 and its role in sex determination.

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