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BIO 140 Human Biology I - Questions and Solutions

Development of the Male and Female Reproductive Systems - Solutions

Review Questions

1. What controls whether an embryo will develop testes or ovaries?

  1. pituitary gland
  2. hypothalamus
  3. Y chromosome
  4. presence or absence of estrogen

2. Without SRY expression, an embryo will develop ________.

  1. male reproductive structures
  2. female reproductive structures
  3. no reproductive structures
  4. male reproductive structures 50 percent of the time and female reproductive structures 50 percent of the time

3. The timing of puberty can be influenced by which of the following?

  1. genes
  2. stress
  3. amount of body fat
  4. all of the above

 

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Critical Thinking Questions

1. Identify the changes in sensitivity that occur in the hypothalamus, pituitary, and gonads as a boy or girl approaches puberty. Explain how these changes lead to the increases of sex steroid hormone secretions that drive many pubertal changes.

Solution: As an individual approaches puberty, two changes in sensitivity occur. The first is a decrease of sensitivity in the hypothalamus and pituitary to negative feedback, meaning that it takes increasingly larger concentrations of sex steroid hormones to stop the production of LH and FSH. The second change in sensitivity is an increase in the sensitivity of the gonads to the FSH and LH signals, meaning that the gonads of adults are more responsive to gonadotropins than are the gonads of children. As a result of these two changes, the levels of LH and FSH slowly increase and lead to the enlargement and maturation of the gonads, which in turn leads to secretion of higher levels of sex hormones and the initiation of spermatogenesis and folliculogenesis.

2. Explain how the internal female and male reproductive structures develop from two different duct systems.

Solution: The internal reproductive structures form from one of two rudimentary duct systems in the embryo. Testosterone secretion stimulates growth of the male tract, the Wolffian duct. Secretions of sustentacular cells trigger a degradation of the female tract, the Müllerian duct. Without these stimuli, the Müllerian duct will develop and the Wolffian duct will degrade, resulting in a female embryo.

3. Explain what would occur during fetal development to an XY individual with a mutation causing a nonfunctional SRY gene.

Solution: If the SRY gene were not functional, the XY individual would be genetically a male, but would develop female reproductive structures.

 

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OpenStax, Development of the Male and Female Reproductive Systems. OpenStax CNX. Jul 16, 2014 http://cnx.org/contents/eac230d1-6af8-41d5-8b41-a1142f5f98d8@5. © Jul 16, 2014 OpenStax. Textbook content produced by OpenStax is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 license.