PARENT SESSION
KEYNOTE ADDRESS: GENES, GENDER, AND GERM CELLS

Sunday, August 1, 2004
1:30 PM–2:30 PM
Chan Center - Concert Hall
Introduction: Michael K. Skinner (Washington State University, Center for Reproductive Biology, Center for Integrated Biotechnology, Pullman, WA) Speaker: David C. Page (Whitehead Institute, MIT, Cambridge, MA)

(K1) GENES, GENDER, AND GERM CELLS.

Page, David^*,1, ¹ Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Whitehead Institute, Cambridge, MA

ABSTRACT- What do the mammalian sex chromosomes have to do with being male or female? This question may seem straightforward, even trivial, 14 years after Goodfellow and Lovell-Badge's identification of SRY as the testis-determining factor on the Y chromosome. To the contrary, as I will argue, this question is richer, deeper, and more subtle than we in reproductive biology ever imagined. Recent years have brought a growing awareness of connections between X- and Y-length genes and two particular aspects of sex differentiation and reproductive function: germ cell development and spermatogenesis. The biology of germ cells evidently has been a potent force in molding both the X and Y chromosomes as they evolved from an ordinary pair of autosomes. Indeed, the emerging understanding of sex chromosome evolution calls into question the place of honor traditionally reserved for the sex chromosomes in discussions of mammalian sex determination. When constructing models of sex determination, does it still makes sense to begin with the sex chromosomes?

KEY WORDS: germ cells, sex chromosome evolution