persistent mullerian duct syndrome in a 71-year-old man, case report h. salehi md , m.r. vatani baf md received:27/06/06 sent for revision: 11/10/06 received revised manuscript: 07/02/07 accepted: 12/02/07 background and objective: normal sexual differentiation occurs in the 6th embryonic week and in a normal embryonic life. both wolffian and mullerian ducts are present until the onset of sexua...

BACKGROUND In the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe, the TOR (target of rapamycin) and PKA (protein kinase A) signaling transduction pathways regulate the expression of genes required for cell growth and sexual differentiation in response to the nutritional environment. Inhibition of Tor2 signaling results in the induction of genes involved in sexual differentiation, and the cells undergo...

Sex-specific gonadal steroidogenesis during development is critical to differentiation of the sexually dimorphic phenotype and reproductive function of adult organisms. Environmental contaminants may affect the process of sexual differentiation through disruption of steroid production and/or action. Control of the steroidogenic metabolic pathway is regulated partly by P450 cytochrome hydroxylas...

Brain sexual differentiation is orchestrated by precise coordination of sex steroid hormones. In some species, programming of select male brain regions is dependent upon aromatization of testosterone to estrogen. In mammals, these hormones surge during the organizational and activational periods that occur during perinatal development and adulthood, respectively. In various fish and reptiles, i...

Nonylphenol (NP) is a persistent environmental chemical that can disrupt the organism's endocrine system, and is detected in the surface water and sea. In this study, we investigated whether NP can alter transcriptional expression of sexual differentiation-related genes. Three generations of zebrafish were exposed to 0, 2, 20 and 200 μg·L-1 of NP, and transcriptional expression of sexual differ...

Sexual conflict has been suggested as a general cause of genetic diversification in reproductive characters, and as a possible cause of speciation. We use individual-based simulations to study the dynamics of sexual conflict in an isolated diploid population with no spatial structure. To explore the effects of genetic details, we consider two different types of interlocus interaction between fe...

Sexual reproduction requires three types of differentiation: gonadal for the production of gametes, genital for the conveyance of gametes to a point of fertilization, and behavioral for the urge to behave sexually. Two articles in this issue of the Journal illuminate several of these steps. MacLaughlin and Donahoe (pages 367–378) provide a current view of the genetics of gonadal development, de...

The crustacean male-specific androgenic gland (AG) regulates sexual differentiation. In the prawn Macrobrachium rosenbergii, silencing an AG-specific insulin-like encoding transcript (Mr-IAG) inhibited the development of male sexual characters, suggesting that Mr-IAG is a key androgenic hormone. We used recombinant pro-Mr-IAG peptide to generate antibodies that recognized the peptide in AG cell...

Many aspects of social behavior are controlled by sex-specific pheromones. Gender-appropriate production of the sexually dimorphic transcription factors doublesex and fruitless controls sexual differentiation and sexual behavior. miR-124 mutant males exhibited increased male-male courtship and reduced reproductive success with females. Females showed a strong preference for wild-type males over...