Summary
[Wormbase] him-8 encodes a protein with two C-terminal noncanonical C2H2 zinc-fingers whose paralogs include ZIM-1/-3 and C02F5.12; HIM-8 is required by X chromosomes for normal homolog pairing, synapsis, recombination, and segregation during meiosis; him-8 mutants have an increased frequency of genotypically XO males in self-fertile hermaphrodite populations; HIM-8 is expressed during meiosis, and is associated with the X chromosome's meiotic pairing center (PC), which associates with the nuclear envelope during meiotic prophase; him-8 mutations are enhanced by rearrangements that inactivate the X-chromosomal PC; HIM-8 functions are genetically separable, since the him-8(me4) point mutation (which alters a domain N-terminal to HIM-8's zinc fingers) permits normal chromosome binding and nuclear localization, but causes abnormal pairing and synapsis; while the C-terminal region of HIM-8 most closely resembles those of its orthologs in other Caenorhabditis species, its N-terminal region is highly divergent, suggesting species-specific functions; unlike other him mutations, him-8 solely affects X chromosomes, and does not produce embryonic lethality via autosomal nondisjunction or aneuploidy; however, failure of X-chromosomal synapsis in him-8 mutants blocks the pachytene transistion from polarized to nonpolarized meiotic nuclei, by blocking the resolution of recombination intermediates on other chromosomes; him-8-blocked meiotic autosomes show persistent RAD-51 foci and have excess crossovers, both of which may be symptoms of a HUS-1-independent checkpoint induced by X-chromosomal nonsynapsis rather than DNA damage; HIM-8 also acts outside of meiosis, by inhibiting EGL-13 expression or activity; mutations of the HIM-8 zinc-finger domain semidominantly suppress missense (but not null) egl-13 mutations, due to him-8 haploinsufficiency; mutant HIM-8 fails to suppress mutant egl-13 on a free transgenic array, and also fails to suppress native mutant egl-13 if transgenic excess copies of the egl-13 promoter are present
.
Wormbase predicts one model from 2 genes.
AceView summary
According to AceView, this gene is
expressed at low level, only 15.2% of the average gene in this release. The
sequence of this gene is defined by
2 cDNA clones. We annotate
structural defects or features in one cDNA clone.
The gene contains
5 distinct gt-ag introns. Transcription produces one mRNA.
The spliced mRNA putatively encodes
a good protein.
Function: There are
10 articles specifically referring to this gene in PubMed. In addition we point
below to 56 abstracts. This gene is associated to a
phenotype (High Incidence of Males, increased X chromosome loss). Proteins are expected to
localize in nucleus.
Please quote:
AceView: a comprehensive cDNA-supported gene and transcripts annotation, Genome Biology 2006, 7(Suppl 1):S12
Map: This gene him-8 maps on chomosome IV at position +4.85 (interpolated). In AceView, it covers
2.08 kb, from 10561877 to 10563951 (WS190), on the direct strand.
Links to: WormBase,
RNAiDB.
Other names: The gene is also known in Wormgenes/AceView by its positional name 4L327, in Wormbase by its cosmid.number name T07G12.12.
Legend
Introns are depicted by broken lines; the height of the top of each intron reflects the relative number of clones supporting this intron.
]^[ A pink broken line denotes an intron with standard boundaries (gt-ag or gc-ag) that is exactly supported (i.e. a cDNA sequence exactly matches the genome over 16 bp, 8 on both sides of the intron).
] ^ ] A blue broken line denotes non-standard introns, exactly supported, but with non-standard at-ac or any other boundaries.
]-[ Pink and
] - ] blue straight lines represent 'fuzzy' introns of the standard and non-standard types respectively, those introns do not follow the 16 bp rule. Black straight lines ]-[denote gaps in the alignments.
Exons: Wide filled pink areas represent putative protein coding regions, narrow empty pink boxes represent the 5'UTR (on the left) and 3' UTR (on the right). Flags identify validated endings: cap site on the 5' side, polyadenylation site on the 3' side. Filled flags correspond to frequent events while empty flags have lesser supporting cDNAs (yet all are validated); at the 3' side, black flags are associated to the main AATAAA signal,
blue flags to any single letter variant of the main . More explanations are given in the
gene help file
