Evidence for Multiple Functional Copies of the Male Sex-Determining Locus, Sry, in African Murine Rodents

Southern hybridization data suggest that the male sex-determining locus, Sry, is often duplicated in rodents. Here we explore DNA sequence evolution of orthologous and paralogous copies of Sry isolated from six species of African murines. PCR amplification followed by direct sequencing revealed from two to four copies of Sry per species. All copies include a long open reading frame, with a stop codon that coincides closely with the stop codon of the house mouse, Mus musculus, a species known to have a single copy of Sry. A phylogenetic analysis suggests that there are at least seven paralogous copies of Sry in this group of rodents. Putative orthologues are identical; sequence divergence among putative paralogues ranges from 1 to 8% (excluding the CAG repeat), with much lower levels of divergence in the high-mobility group (HMG-box) region than in the C-terminal region. A high proportion of nucleotide substitutions in both regions result in amino-acid replacement. The long open reading frame, conserved HMG-box, and pattern of evolution of the putative paralogues suggest that they are functional.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/42367/1/239-45-1-60_45n1p60.pd

Access to information and the Paris Agreement

Article 12 of the Paris Agreement on Climate change states that ‘Parties shall cooperate in taking measures, as appropriate, to enhance climate change education, training, public awareness, public participation and public access to information, recognizing the importance of these steps with respect to enhancing actions under this Agreement’. The contribution shall try to describe what such a commitment could entail, both for Parties and for the public at large, taking into account the fact that the Paris Agreement is a worldwide Agreement, with the potential of being binding on States that are not Parties to the Aarhus Convention. Are we on our way towards a globalization of the democratic requirements that are inherent to Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration