Institute of Evolutionary Biology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh, West Mains Road, Edinburgh EH9 3LF, UK.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2022 May 9;377(1850):20210314. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2021.0314. Epub 2022 Mar 21.
Sex chromosomes are familiar to most biologists since they first learned about genetics. However, research over the past 100 years has revealed that different organisms have evolved sex-determining systems independently. The differences in the ages of systems, and in how they evolved, both affect whether sex chromosomes have evolved. However, the diversity means that the terminology used tends to emphasize either the similarities or the differences, sometimes causing misunderstandings. In this article, I discuss some concepts where special care is needed with terminology. The following four terms regularly create problems: 'sex chromosome', 'master sex-determining gene', 'evolutionary strata' and 'genetic degeneration'. There is no generally correct or wrong use of these words, but efforts are necessary to make clear how they are to be understood in specific situations. I briefly outline some widely accepted ideas about sex chromosomes, and then discuss these 'problem terms', highlighting some examples where careful use of the words helps bring to light current uncertainties and interesting questions for future work. This article is part of the theme issue 'Sex determination and sex chromosome evolution in land plants'.
性染色体对于大多数生物学家来说并不陌生，因为他们最早了解的就是遗传学。然而，在过去的 100 年里，研究揭示了不同的生物体已经独立进化出了性别决定系统。系统的年龄差异和进化方式都影响着性染色体是否进化。然而，这种多样性意味着所使用的术语往往强调相似性或差异性，有时会导致误解。在本文中，我讨论了一些需要特别注意术语的概念。以下四个术语经常会产生问题：“性染色体”、“主性别决定基因”、“进化层次”和“遗传退化”。这些词没有一个是普遍正确或错误的用法，但需要努力明确它们在特定情况下的含义。我简要概述了一些关于性染色体的广泛接受的观点，然后讨论了这些“有问题的术语”，强调了一些例子，在这些例子中，谨慎使用这些词有助于揭示当前的不确定性和未来工作中有趣的问题。本文是主题为“陆地植物的性别决定和性染色体进化”的一部分。
