Mammalian sex chromosomes. II. Pairing and alignment of the X and Y chromosomes of the pygmy mouse, Mus dunni

Abstract

In the pygmy mouse, Mus dunni, the entire Y chromosome and the short arm of the X and distal region of its long arm are constitutively heterochromatic. Different banding studies on somatic chromosomes revealed the GC nature of the distally located heterochromatin of the long arms of both the X and Y chromosomes. The short arm of the X and the rest of the Y are AT-rich. During meiosis, the long arms of the X and Y paired extensively, sometimes more than half of the Y pairing with the X. This observation is in disagreement with that of Pathak and Hsu (1976) who reported end-to-end pairing between the long arm of the X and the short arm of the Y. The orientation observed by us is favourable to a successful meiotic recombination but whether this takes place remains to be demonstrated.