CELL BIOLOGY:
In Sex Reversal, Protein Deterred by Nuclear Barrier
Aparna Sreenivasan
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA--Mutations in a protein called SRY cause Swyer syndrome, in which babies are born with a male set of chromosomes and female sexual organs. Data presented here this week at the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology show that in some cases, SRY has trouble entering the nucleus of fetal male gonadal cells, making it unable to turn on the genes that make testes.