Meeting Abstract

S1-1.1  Thursday, Jan. 3  Candidate genes in a turtle with temperature-dependent sex determination CHOJNOWSKI, JL*; BRAUN, EL; Univ. of Florida; Univ. of Florida jena@zoo.ufl.edu

In many turtle species, sex is determined in a process known as temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD) where the incubation temperature leads to gonadal sex differentiation. Over 2000 sequences from the red-eared slider turtle, produced by three different subtraction libraries, were collected to look for novel genes that might regulate or be involved in TSD. About 350 identified genes were then characterized further with a macroarray. Thus, comparing embryos incubated at the two significant temperatures (26°C and 31°C) for sex determination in the red-eared slider turtle. On another note, the turtle sequences were used to help establish previous analyses from the alligator that GC-rich isochores (defined as long [> 100 kb] regions with relatively homogeneous within-region base composition) are not correlated with homeothermy.