Global analysis of X chromosome dosage compensation

We have conducted a global analysis of somatic dosage compensation and also asked if germ cell dosage compensate by microarray analysis of gene expression in wild-type tissues. To obviate the confounding effects of scatter and especially the skewed genomic distributions of genes with sex-biased expression in both the soma and germline [there are fewer X chromosome genes with male-biased expression], we used mutations that transform sexual identity. In the soma we used gain-of-function transformer to turn X;AA flies into somatic females with tumorous germlines. The gonadectomized somas of these X;AA female flies were compared to similarly prepared XX;AA females. The X;AA ovarian tumors, which are possibly the result of germline sex transformations, were compared to the similar XX;AA ovarian tumors generated with loss-of-function alleles of ovarian tumor and Sex-lethal. We used alleles of transformer-2 and doublesex to transform XX;AA flies into somatic males with atrophic germlines. Keywords: other