AUTHOR=Li Miao 

TITLE=Sex body: A nest of protein mixture

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology

VOLUME=Volume 11 - 2023

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/cell-and-developmental-biology/articles/10.3389/fcell.2023.1165745

DOI=10.3389/fcell.2023.1165745

ISSN=2296-634X

ABSTRACT=During pachytene stage in mammalian meiosis, the X and Y chromosomes remain largely unsynapsed outside the pseudoautosomal region (PAR), while autosomes are fully synapsed. Then the sex chromosomes are compartmentalized into a “sex body” in the nucleus and are subject to meiotic sex chromosome inactivation (MSCI). For decades, the form and function of the sex body and MSCI have been the subject worth exploring. Notably, a series of  proteins were gradually reported to be located on sex body area and were inferred  to play an essential role in MSCI, but what proteins actually locate in this area and how these proteins promote sex body formation and MSCI establishment remained unclear. Collectively, DNA damage response (DDR) factors, the downstream Fanconi anemia (FA) proteins and other canonical repressive histone modifications were reported to be associated with sex body. Here, this paper reviews the factors located at sex body area and try to provide new insights to study this mysterious domain.