Master regulator of a mosquito X chromosome

[...]the mRNA in females retains a non-coding sequence (an intron) that is lost from the males' mRNA and contains a stop codon - a short sequence that terminates protein synthesis (Fig. 1). Several factors might account for this. [...]the loss of SOA reduces expression from the male X chromosome much less than would be expected from a complete loss of compensation - indicating that Anopheles males might use multiple compensation systems. Maggie P. Lauria Sneideman and Victoria H. Meller are in the Department of Biological Sciences, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan 48202, USA. e-mail: viotoria.meller@wayne.edu The authors declare no competing interests.