Temperature, steroids and sex determination

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Abstract
Soon after the sex steroid hormones were first identified, isolated and synthesized, they were found to have potent effects on sex determination and sexual differentiation in various fish, amphibians, reptiles and, to a lesser extent, birds (reviewed in Burns 1961). However, there was no evidence that these chemicals could influence gonadal differentiation in mammals, although they were recognized to mediate differentiation of accessory and secondary sex characteristics. Indeed, conventional wisdom today holds that steroid hormones play no role in sex determination in mammals, and it is only following gonadal differentiation that steroid hormones produced by the ovaries or testes sculpt the characters that distinguish males from females. Thus, with the exception of limited research in aquaculture and poultry science, the study of the role of sex hormones in vertebrate sex determination essentially ceased by midcentury, with the result that current texts focus on the molecular genetics of sex determination in

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