Pilgrim, DaveMcGregor, AngelaJackle, PetraJohnson, TroyHansen, Dave D.2006-09-182006-09-181995"The C. elegans Sex-determining Gene fem-2 Encodes a Putative Protein Phosphatase" Dave Pilgrim, Angela McGregor, Petra Jackle, Troy Johnson, and Dave Hansen Molecular Biology of the Cell Vol. 6, 1159-1171, September 19951059-1524http://hdl.handle.net/1880/43478determination in Caenorhabditis elegans suggests that the gene fem-2 plays an important role in regulating a pathway transducing a non-cell-autonomous signal to a nuclear transcription factor. The wild-type fem-2 gene was cloned by identifying sequences from the C. elegans physical map that could restore normal Fem-2 function to homozygous mutant fem-2 transgenic animals. cDNA sequences mapping to the minimal rescuing region correspond to an open reading frame with a sequence similar to protein phosphatase 2C enzymes from systems as diverse as yeast, humans, and plants, but the alignments suggest that FEM-2 falls into a separate class of proteins than the canonical homologues. Several fem-2 mutant alleles were sequenced, and the mutations are predicted to cause protein changes consistent with their observed phenotypes, such as missense mutations in conditional alleles, and a nonsense mutation in a predicted null allele. This is the first evidence implicating phosphorylation and/or dephosphorylation as a control mechanism in C. elegans sex determination38 bytestext/plainenBiologyjournal article10.11575/PRISM/35126