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Developmental biology

Females have a lot of guts

Nature volume 530, pages 289–290 (2016)Cite this article

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The discovery of sex-biased proliferation in the intestinal stem cells of fruit-fly midguts reveals that the organ's size is determined by a previously undefined, sex-specific molecular pathway. See Letter p.344

Within-species genetic differences are central to many biological phenomena, from evolution to disease susceptibility. One of the most under-studied intraspecies differences is sex. We tend to think of sex in terms of characteristics that are related to reproduction, but differences between sexes extend to many parts of the body. For instance, the midgut (an absorptive organ similar to the small intestine) of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is longer in females than in males — especially after mating, when females produce many eggs that are replete with proteins and lipids1. On page 344 of this issue, Hudry et al.2 report that a previously unidentified branch of the sex-determination pathway underlies this dynamic difference in organ size, by controlling the proliferation of stem cells in the midgut.

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Figure 1: Sex and the gut.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Justin Fear and Brian Oliver are in the Laboratory of Cellular and Developmental Biology, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, USA.,

    Justin Fear & Brian Oliver

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  1. Justin Fear
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  2. Brian Oliver
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Correspondence to Brian Oliver.

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Fear, J., Oliver, B. Females have a lot of guts. Nature 530, 289–290 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/530289a

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