Nature 354, 486 - 489 (12 December 1991); doi:10.1038/354486a0

A candidate spermatogenesis gene on the mouse Y chromosome is homologous to ubiquitin-activating enzyme E1

Graham F. Kay, Alan Ashworth^*, Graeme D. Penny, Morag Dunlop, Sally Swift^*, Neil Brockdorff & Sohaila Rastant^†

Section of Comparative Biology, MRC Clinical Research Centre, Harrow HA1 3UJ, UK
^* Chester Beatty Laboratories, The Institute of Cancer Research, Fulham Road, London SW3 6JB, UK
^† To whom correspondence should be addressed.

THE human X-linked gene A1S9 (refs ^1–3) complements a temperature-sensitive cell-cycle mutation in mouse L cells⁴, and encodes the ubiquitin-activating enzyme El (refs ^5–7). The gene has been reported to escape X-chromosome inactivation⁸, but there is some conflicting evidence⁹. We have isolated part of the mouse Als9 gene, mapped it to the proximal portion of the X chromosome and shown that it undergoes normal X-inactivation. We alsodetected two copies of the gene on the short arm of the mouse Y chromosome (Als9Y-l and Als9Y-2). The functional Als9Y gene (Als9Y-l) is expressed in testis and is lost in the deletion mutant Sxr ^b (ref. 10). Therefore Als9Y-l is a candidate for the sper-matogenesis gene, Spy, which maps to this region. Als9X is similar to the Zfx gene in undergoing X-inactivation^11,12, yet having homologous sequences on the short arm of the Y chromosome^13,14, which are expressed in the testis. These Y-linked genes may form part of a coregulated group of genes which function during spermatogenesis.

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