Sex Chromosome

[ValenzuelaLab]

In which category is your new term request?

• new_definition
• existing_definition

Preferred term label

Sex Chromosome

Synonyms

Allosome

Synonym type

None

Textual definition

Sex chromosomes are linkage groups whose inheritance is correlated with sex

ID of term

No response

Parent term

No response

Children term(s)

No response

Taxon-restricted

No response

Reference

Bachtrog, D., M. Kirkpatrick, J. E. Mank, S. F. McDaniel, J. C. Pires, W. Rice, and N. Valenzuela. 2011. Are all sex chromosomes created equal? Trends Genet. 27:350-357.

ORCID Identifier

0000-0003-1148-631X

Additional context

Definitions in OLS are so broad (i.e. "A chromosome involved in sex determination") that all ESD taxa would have sex chromosomes as chromosomes carrying genes in ESD that sense or transduce the environmental signal during sex determination (to commit the bipotential gonad/individual to its sexual fate) could be consider sex chromosomes by this definition.

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct

[KamilSJaron]

I quite like this definition

• it covers well haplodiploidy
• covers well homomorphic sex chromosomes

What I really like is that it removes the direct link with sex determination.

I guess only strange situation is created for PGE species (fungus gnats, gall midges and globular springtails) - the inheritance of what we call sex chromosomes and autosomes is the same; sex chromosomes are the chromosomes that are eliminated (paternal copy) in early development of males (while paternal autosomes are eliminated during spermatogenesis). So their "inheritance" does not correlate with sex, it's quite specifically just sex specific karyotype due to elimination patterns. I wonder if there is some easy fix I don't see.

But we could also just give up on having a definition that works for the words we used for flies and springtails; Maybe we should just stop calling them sex chromosomes (although there are tons and tons of papers doing that, especially in flies they exist since 20s);