Male-specific lethal complex in Drosophila counteracts histone acetylation and does not mediate dosage compensation

• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1222542110
• Publication Date: 2013-02-05T04:29:25Z
• Authors: Lin Sun; Harvey R. Fernandez; Ryan C. Donohue; Jilong Li; Jianlin Cheng; James A. Birchler
• Keywords: Dosage compensation; Histone acetyltransferase; Ectopic expression; Histone H4; SAP30

Significance A popular hypothesis to explain dosage compensation of the X chromosome in male Drosophila is that a histone acetylase brought by MSL complex and increases H4 lysine16 acetylation, which mediates increased expression. We investigated properties with series specific gene-targeting global gene-expression experiments. The data indicate does not mediate directly, but rather, its activity overrides high level acetylation counteracts potential overexpression X-linked genes achieve proper twofold up-regulation males.