Primary sex determination: genetics and biochemistry

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Abstract
Summary On the basis of widespread phylogenetic conservatism, it has been propose'd that serologically-defined H-Y antigen is the inducer of primary sex differentiation in mammals, causing the initially indifferent gonad to become a testis rather than an ovary. The proposal has withstood extensive testing in a variety of biological circumstances: XX males have testes and are H-Y+ and fertile XY females lack testicular tissue and are H-Y; soluble H-Y antigen induces testicular organogenesis in XX indifferent gonads of the fetal calf in culture; H-Y antibody blocks tubular reaggregation of dispersed XY testicular cells, causing them to organize follicular clusters. There is a gonadal receptor for H-Y antigen: fetal ovarian cells that have been exposed to soluble H-Y (released for example by testicular Sertoli cells) take up the molecule and acquire the H-Y+ phenotype; they absorb H-Y antibody in serological tests. Specific uptake of soluble H-Y does not occur in the extra-gonadal tissues. It may be inferred that H-Y antigen is disseminated during embryogenesis and bound by specific receptors in cells of the primordial gonad, and that reaction of H-Y and its receptor signals a program of testicular differentiation, regardless of karyotype. The several anomalies of primary sexual differentiation manifest in such conditions as the XX male, the XX true hermaphrodite, and the XY female can thus reasonably be viewed as specific errors of synthesis, dissemination, and binding of H-Y antigen. H-Y is secreted by ‘Daudi’ cells, cultured from a human XY Burkitt lymphoma. The Daudi-secreted moiety is a single hydrophobic protein of 18,000 molecular weight. Early attempts to characterize H-Y secreted by testicular Sertoli cells have yielded two molecules, one of 16,500 MW (corresponding to the Daudi-secreted 18,000 MW protein), and one of 31,000 MW. It remains to be ascertained whether both are in fact H-Y antigens, and if so, whether one is a polymer of the other, or whether each represents the product of genes with discrete testis-determining functions.