There has been evidence that the nonsense-mediated mRNA decay pathway participates in X chromosome dosage compensation in mammals. In higher eukaryotes with dimorphic sex chromosomes, such as humans and fruit flies, males have one X chromosome, whereas females have two. These organisms have evolved a mechanism that compensates not only for the different number of sex chromosomes between the two sexes, but also for the differing X/autosome ratios. In this genome-wide survey, the scientists found that autosomal genes are more likely to undergo nonsense-mediated decay than X-linked genes. This is because NMD fine tunes X chromosomes and it was demonstrated by inhibiting the pathway. The results were that balanced gene expression between X and autosomes gene expression was decreased by 10–15% no matter the method of inhibition. The NMD pathway is skewed towards depressing expression of larger population or autosomal genes than x-linked ones. In conclusion, the data supports the view that the coupling of alternative splicing and NMD is a pervasive means of gene expression regulation.