{"doi":"10.1093/genetics/152.4.1573","title":"Homologs of the Caenorhabditis elegans Masculinizing Gene her-1 in C. briggsae and the Filarial Parasite Brugia malayi","abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title>\n               <jats:p>The masculinizing gene her-1 in Caenorhabditis elegans (Ce-her-1) encodes a novel protein, HER-1A, which is required for male development. To identify conserved elements in her-1 we have cloned and characterized two homologous nematode genes: one by synteny from the closely related free-living species C. briggsae (Cb-her-1) and the other, starting with a fortuitously identified expressed sequence tag, from the distantly related parasite Brugia malayi (Bm-her-1). The overall sequence identities of the predicted gene products with Ce-HER-1A are only 57% for Cb-HER-1, which is considerably lower than has been found for most homologous briggsae genes, and 35% for Bm-HER-1. However, conserved residues are found throughout both proteins, and like Ce-HER-1A, both have putative N-terminal signal sequences. Ce-her-1 produces a larger masculinizing transcript (her-1a) and a smaller transcript of unknown function (her-1b); both are present essentially only in males. By contrast, Cb-her-1 appears to produce only one transcript, corresponding to her-1a; it is enriched in males but present also in hermaphrodites. Injection of dsRNA transcribed from Cb-her-1 into C. briggsae hermaphrodites (RNA interference) caused XO animals to develop into partially fertile hermaphrodites. Introducing a Cb-her-1 construct as a transgene under control of the C. elegans unc-54 myosin heavy chain promoter caused strong masculinization of both C. briggsae and C. elegans hermaphrodites. Introduction of a similar Bm-her-1 construct into C. elegans caused only very weak, if any, masculinization. We conclude that in spite of considerable divergence the Cb gene is likely to be a functional ortholog of Ce-her-1, while the function of the distantly related Bm gene remains uncertain.</jats:p>","journal":"Genetics","year":1999,"id":601376,"datarank":0.5641800173540344,"base_score":3.7612001156935624,"endowment":3.7612001156935624,"self_citation_contribution":0.5641800173540344,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.5641800173540344,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":42,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":null,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":false,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":null,"fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":998566,"name":"Weiqing Li","orcid":"0000-0002-4623-1854","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":876000,"name":"Barbara Robertson","orcid":"0000-0002-5687-6648","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":542006,"name":"Jacquie Schein","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1542004,"name":"Ibrahim H Kamal","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1542007,"name":"Marco Marra","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1542009,"name":"William B Wood","orcid":null,"position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":786929,"name":"Adrian Streit","orcid":"0000-0002-7838-621X","position":0,"is_corresponding":false}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-29T16:06:38.893327Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}