FORUMula1.com - F1 Forum

[Jabberwocky]

how does (s)he wee?

Like a girl.

thank you that is all I needed to know.

has anyone got her phone number?

[darwin dali]

It sounds like (s)he's not a hermaphrodite at all (like, e.g., snails). Somehow in Caster's fetal development, the primary male schmex organs didn't develop and the female appearance was retained. Interestingly, female is the default condition and males have to add something (mainly hormonal signals) to guarantee they turn into males. So, from what I've heard I'd say Caster is an incomplete male.

i wonder if its down to xy chromosomal aneuploidy or defective y?

There are multiple places where something could go wrong, see, e.g., this excerpt from a new article published yesterday (with reference to Caster):
[...]
We found that, like Fgf9, Wnt4 is expressed in both sexes while the gonad is still bipotential, but it is up-regulated in XX gonads and down-regulated in XY gonads precisely at the time when the gonadal fate decision occurs—the opposite of Fgf9 expression.

About this time, we remembered a piece of evidence from organ-culture experiments done earlier in my lab suggesting that FGF9 could block expression of Wnt4. Could these two signaling pathways be acting antagonistically, staging the battle of the sexes in the gonad? Yuna Kim, another graduate student in my lab, planned a set of experiments to test this idea.

Other researchers had shown that the primary role of SRY is to up-regulate a closely related transcription factor, Sox9. Various experiments showed that SOX9 is capable of substituting for SRY in activating testis development. The question was how WNT4 and FGF9 fit into the story. Yuna found that FGF9 and SOX9 reinforce each other's signaling to establish the testis pathway in XY gonads. She showed that when Fgf9 is eliminated, XY male gonads switch umpalumpa and activate ovarian genes. But our most exciting finding was when she discovered that SOX9 and FGF9 are both up-regulated in an XX female gonad when Wnt4 is absent. This clearly showed how the male pathway could be activated in an XX genetic female, in the complete absence of the Sry gene—just as those human XX male patients had predicted.

Based on these experiments, we proposed a new model for mammalian umpalumpa determination. In both XX and XY primordial gonads, Fgf9, Sox9, and Wnt4 are all expressed simultaneously early in development, when the fate of the gonad is still undetermined. In an XX gonad, WNT4 dominates and turns off the testis pathway. However, in an XY gonad, SOX9 and FGF9 get an extra boost from SRY, which allows them to dominate and repress WNT4.
Blanche Capel is an Associate Professor in the Department of Cell Biology at Duke University Medical Center


SRY is a gene on the Y-chromosome, the others are located on the X-chromosome.

[al4x]

an interesting read, i was aware of the SRY only and other SOX clusters

[stonemonkey]

Where does (s)he keep her/his gonads?

[darwin dali]

Where does (s)he keep her/his gonads?

In a jar from Costco.

Internally, up in her abdomen, probably around where ovaries would normally be located.

[bud]

A racehorse with elevated levels of testosterone has been found to be a hermaphrodite, according to reports.

Tests revealed the female horse possessed a male Y chromosome and internal male testes that produced large amounts of testosterone.
The condition of the horse, Tuscan Abbe, is known in racing circles as an intersex mare.
Suspicion about the horse was raised after the mare won an event at Bankstown in Sydney and a swab test showed a high amount of testosterone, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Officials raided the stables, suspecting doping, but an internal test by a reproductive specialist found that the high levels were due to what vets described as "two potential testicles inside her abdomen."
According to the newspaper, reproductive vet Dr Cecelia Cortina Di Favria did an ultrasound and concluded that something was amiss.
''Cecelia had an extensive look through her and we were convinced something was not normal,'' Newcastle Equine Centre's Dr Patrick Kelly said.
''The mare doesn't look like she has a uterus, and potentially has two testicles inside her abdomen.

''We can't be sure they are testicles, we assume they are because they are the right size, the right consistency, and they are sitting in the right spot where ovaries normally are … and they are certainly not ovaries.''
A DNA test confirmed the presence of a Y chromosome.
It is unlikely that Tuscan Abbe will be able to compete in mare events following the results, but owners will not have to refund the $10,000 prize money from the Bankstown race, as they were not aware of the mare's condition at the time.

[darwin dali]

A racehorse with elevated levels of testosterone has been found to be a hermaphrodite, according to reports.

Tests revealed the female horse possessed a male Y chromosome and internal male testes that produced large amounts of testosterone.
The condition of the horse, Tuscan Abbe, is known in racing circles as an intersex mare.
Suspicion about the horse was raised after the mare won an event at Bankstown in Sydney and a swab test showed a high amount of testosterone, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Officials raided the stables, suspecting doping, but an internal test by a reproductive specialist found that the high levels were due to what vets described as "two potential testicles inside her abdomen."
According to the newspaper, reproductive vet Dr Cecelia Cortina Di Favria did an ultrasound and concluded that something was amiss.
''Cecelia had an extensive look through her and we were convinced something was not normal,'' Newcastle Equine Centre's Dr Patrick Kelly said.
''The mare doesn't look like she has a uterus, and potentially has two testicles inside her abdomen.

''We can't be sure they are testicles, we assume they are because they are the right size, the right consistency, and they are sitting in the right spot where ovaries normally are … and they are certainly not ovaries.''
A DNA test confirmed the presence of a Y chromosome.
It is unlikely that Tuscan Abbe will be able to compete in mare events following the results, but owners will not have to refund the $10,000 prize money from the Bankstown race, as they were not aware of the mare's condition at the time.

They could do a testicular biopsy to find out...