Molecular screening of XY-negative sex reversal cases in horses revealed anomalies in amelogenin testing.

Abstract

Male-to-female sex reversal in horses is a developmental disorder in which phenotypic females have a male genetic constitution. Male-to-female sex reversal is the second most common genetic sex abnormality, after X chromosome monosomy. All male-to-female sex reversal cases studied to date have been found to be infertile. Therefore, a screening test is particularly useful in laboratories doing DNA genotyping in horses. Our laboratory has tested > 209,000 horses for parentage using a panel of microsatellite markers and the sex marker gene amelogenin (). Suspect XY sex reversal cases are reported females with a male profile bytesting. After routine genotyping, 49 cases were detected and further tested using the sex-determining region Y () gene, confirming the XY-negative genotype of suspect sex reversal cases. When some inconsistencies arose in the initial result, a molecular panel of X- and Y-linked markers was analyzed for these samples. Of the 49 cases, 33 were confirmed as XY-negative. The remaining 16 cases were identified as false-positives as a result of anomalies oftesting in horses.