X Chromosome May Leave a Mark On Male Fertility 124
sciencehabit writes "Behind every great man, the saying goes, there's a great woman. And behind every sperm, there may be an X chromosome gene. In humans, the Y chromosome makes men, men, or so researchers have thought: It contains genes that are responsible for sex determination, male development, and male fertility. But now a team has discovered that X—'the female chromosome'—could also play a significant role in maleness. It contains scores of genes that are active only in tissue destined to become sperm. The finding shakes up our ideas about how sex chromosomes influence gender and also suggests that at least some parts of the X chromosome are playing an unexpectedly dynamic role in evolution."
So we are part... (Score:1)
Re:So we are part... (Score:5, Interesting)
No, it's just bad science journalism. The X chromosome is, for the most part, just another part of the genome; it contains all sorts of random junk, like blood clotting factors and parts of the receptors in our eyes that let us see colour. Any disease you've ever heard of that's "X-linked" or more common in men than women is either affected or effected, directly or indirectly, by the X chromosome. It is of no significance or note whatsoever that it contains stuff that's only activated in the male body.
If you want something weird and sex-linked to rant insanely about, however, there's always the mystery of digit ratio [wikipedia.org].
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It's not a trait that lasts very long; every successive daughter has a 50% chance of passing it on afterwards, after all, so at most you'd expect such a mutation to only be around for three or four generations.
However, such diseases are probably the reason why women make up 51% of the population. In the stereotypical portrayal of hunter-gather societies, certainly it is desirable to have slightly more women than men; the traditional division of responsibilities leaves the women with more consistent work. Co
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Re:So we are part... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's nothing wrong here; it's just a simple misunderstanding by the journalist. We've known about X-linked for as long we've known about sex chromosomes, which inherently implies that the X chromosome has responsibilities beyond determining sex.
Believe it or not, however, there are actually advantages to the Y chromosome being so minimal. Men are nature's beta testers: sometimes mutations in the X chromosome have significant benefits, and as these traits aren't balanced out by a second allele, they become more pronounced and hence are easier to detect during sexual and natural selection. This is (probably) why men display a greater variance in height, strength, and analytical skill. Similarly, by always suffering from a disease, and hence by not getting laid, men protect the rest of the tribe from the disorders they end up with. (Admittedly not great when you're actually in the middle of things, but sexual dimorphism and reproduction are both full of cruelties.)
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Our awareness of environmental triggering of epigenetic phenomena is actually quite older. Agriculture is full of examples of Lamarckian traits, such as resistance to drought or cold; plants switch on these attributes over successive generations as a form of memory, no DNA mutations required; it's all chromatin re-modelling. You're certainly right that it took us a while to accept that nearly everything in the Central Dogma has at least one counterexample.
A little note: obesity is actually an immune disorde
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3.5 Billion years of hacks (Score:5, Funny)
This is what happens when you have 3.5 Billion years of hacks. Legacy code, no overall architecture and absolute chaos.
Let's start over and redesign humans from the ground up.
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*no appendix for example.
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The appendix may not be as useless as we once thought.
Recent investigations have suggested that the appendix acts as a kind of "wildlife preserve" for our gut microbes. Throughout much of our evolutionary history (and much of the modern world) massive diarrhea has been a disease with two distinct issues: the likelihood of death from dehydration, and the disruption of intestinal flora in the survivors. A rapid recolonization with "good bugs" would have helped keep survivors from the kinds of recurring and
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Re:3.5 Billion years of hacks (Score:5, Insightful)
The Y chromosome used to just be a variant of the X chromosome, with only a few genes different; they were the same size. Over time, careless maintenance staff decided the backups were redundant and stopped keeping them. Thus something like 5% of men have one or more factory defects—most commonly colour-deficient vision, which some backward engineer decided was a feature [straightdope.com], not a bug, and went to great lengths to distribute bad copies to other users.
On the plus side, we recently found out that the genome actually does have some [wikipedia.org] documentation—well, more like debugger symbols—so it's getting easier to figure out where the important binaries are located. Unfortunately in the process we also discovered that what appeared to be severe filesystem fragmentation is actually rotational performance optimization, and most of the rest of the disk is actually a messy broth of shell scripts [wikipedia.org], not merely unallocated space as we assumed [wikipedia.org].
The sad thing is that even if we did redesign everything, it would probably be way worse than the existing codebase, particularly since we only have a tiny portion of the actual spec, which you can imagine was never exactly written down.
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Can you explain that again, but with more car analogies?
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This is what happens when you use genetic algorithms [slashdot.org] to design your code. It's a lot faster and more efficient, but no one knows how the hell (or even why) it works, and you end up with a bunch of garbage code that probably does nothing, but heaven help you if you try to remove it.
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Well, we upgraded [wikipedia.org] to include a dynamic self-modifying portion, but there are some bugs; the basic self/non-self discrimination regularizer has a high tendency to cause wars over stupid things like who [ou.edu] has [turnbacktogod.com] the [blogspot.com] better [biography.com] facial [blogspot.com] hair [wikimedia.org]. Unfortunately, the wide range of other regularizers—emotions, convictions, self-preservation, altruism, and the rest—aren't enough to completely repress this sort of thing. On the plus side they're now inventing new ones [wikipedia.org].
(In all seriousness, I think comparing the human s
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I wish to table the motion that Samantha Wright be officially recognised as a Slashdot Treasure.
That is all.
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Let's start over and redesign humans from the ground up.
Humans designed by committee might have cupholders for ears and camel humps, but even a committee wouldn't do anything as asinine as running a sewer line out through the middle of male&female sex bits.
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Let's start over and redesign humans from the ground up.
Humans designed by committee might have cupholders for ears and camel humps, but even a committee wouldn't do anything as asinine as running a sewer line out through the middle of male&female sex bits.
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Actually, only males have the sewer line run out through their actual sex bits. With females, the uterus and fallopian tubes are totally separate from the ureter. For the male, it makes a lot of sense actually. Why build two hoses when you can have one with a valve to select what comes out of it. Kind of like the hose on the gas pump at the filing station. One hose supplying different fluids as the situation warrants.
As any engineering student will tell you, the purpose of engineering isn't to build the s
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Three graduate engineers were discussing who might have been responsible for the design of the human body.
The first one said "Think of all the joints etc. it must have been a mechanical engineer".
The second one said "No no, what about all the electrical impulses and nerves etc? It must have been an electrical engineer".
The third graduate was shaking his head, "You are both wrong, the human body was designed by a civil engineer - who else would run a waste pipe through a recreational area"?
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This is what happens when you have 3.5 Billion years of hacks. Legacy code, no overall architecture and absolute chaos.
Let's start over and redesign humans from the ground up.
The early programmers attempted to select the most fit patches (based on what they were able to observe as rank novice coders) to incorporate into the next version of the software. However, with programming techniques such as "fat acceptance," "gender nonconformity," and "child-bearing as a right" the most recent patches have absolutely ZERO quality control.
Who wrote this mess? (Score:2, Insightful)
And where's the documentation?
Re:Who wrote this mess? (Score:5, Insightful)
An infinite number of monkeys and a ruthless unit testing process. As for documentation, there's lots of people working on it, but some of them think they should be able to hold exclusive rights to their documentation.
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"Source code is the ultimate documentation".
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"The finding shakes up our ideas about how sex chromosomes influence gender and also suggests that at least some parts of the X chromosome are playing an unexpectedly dynamic role in evolution."
Huh? What? Shakes up WHOSE ideas? Certainly not mine.
YY babies don't tend to go very far (not XYY, just YY).
Seriously... I don't see how this perfectly obvious stuff "shakes up" much of anything.
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"The finding shakes up our ideas about how sex chromosomes influence gender and also suggests that at least some parts of the X chromosome are playing an unexpectedly dynamic role in evolution."
Huh? What? Shakes up WHOSE ideas? Certainly not mine.
YY babies don't tend to go very far (not XYY, just YY).
Seriously... I don't see how this perfectly obvious stuff "shakes up" much of anything.
Well, if they just reported the findings without adding hyperbole, nobody would read their article. For example take these two hypothetical titles: "Research sheds new light into inter-relationship between X and Y chromosomes." and "X Chromosome findings change how we will forever view gender." Which one do you thing will garner more page hits and readers?
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Moronic writer. Old news with new data. (Score:5, Insightful)
The y chromosome doesn't code many genes at all, and this has been known for a long time. It's main function is turning specific genes off. Anatomy of all sorts, including gender characteristics is coded across all 24 chromosomes. The y just suppresses the female parts.
If I learn something over a decade ago in a high school class, it shouldn't be "science news."
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Y chromosome is likely to stick around. (Score:5, Informative)
The Y chromosome is a li'l runt and they think it won't even be there anymore in a hunnert thousand years or so.
I don't think there's anyone who takes this seriously any more. There were some people suggesting that if genes are lost at a linear rate off the Y chromosome, it should disappear in another 10 million years. However, chimpanzees and humans show no difference in the number of genes on the Y chromosome since we diverged 6-7 million years ago, and we've both only lost one gene since we diverged from the rhesus macaque 25 mya. Given that sequencing of the platypus genome puts the common mammalian Y chromosome at a max of age of 166 mya, this suggests the linear model is just wrong.
The Wikipedia has good article on this from which I drew my numbers, if you're interested in more.
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Yeah... I heard this a few decades ago in grade school and I thought "WTF? Just about every organism on earth has two genders including things like plants. How can they say that the Y chromosome is going away?"
Unfortunately, my WTF moments concerning these "scientific conclusions" haven't stopped. It's only gotten more frequent as I've matured. At least the poles haven't flipped like my "WTF sensor" for politics. I only go "WTF!?" when I hear something that actually makes sense in politics because I'm
Re:Y chromosome is likely to stick around. (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah... I heard this a few decades ago in grade school and I thought "WTF? Just about every organism on earth has two genders including things like plants. How can they say that the Y chromosome is going away?"
To be fair, the Y-chromosome isn't the only way of determining gender, and the Y-chromosome of non-mammalian species has no common ancestor to those of mammals (they all degenerated long after splitting off).
Some species use the number of X chromosomes. Reptiles and avians use ZW chromosomes, where the "female chromosome" is the shorter, degenerate one. Ants and bees are just kind of weird. [wikipedia.org] The platypus has something like 10 sex chromosomes and lacks the SRY gene, so we have no idea how it really works AFAIK, and platyfish (unrelated) have some sort of weird W/X/Y system.
Single gender in plants is relatively rare, and I have no idea how it works.
Unfortunately, my WTF moments concerning these "scientific conclusions" haven't stopped. It's only gotten more frequent as I've matured.
I think that's more of a problem with bad science journalism than bad science, though.
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To be fair, the Y-chromosome isn't the only way of determining gender
Huh. Shows how much biology I forgot and / or didn't know about. Thank you.
I think that's more of a problem with bad science journalism than bad science, though.
Yes, you're absolutely correct, and I'll certainly concede that point. Despite that: in my personal view of the world, I still consider science journalism to be part of science. After all, without a good way to spread truth to the masses, can science really be considered science? (I suppose it's fair to say that too many people who believe in the whole earth-created-in-six-day-and-here's-scientific-proof has shaped this particul
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If you look at all the chromosomes though, there are a lot of "runts". The size of the chromosome doesn't matter as long as they can hold a few genes that are vital.
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The y just suppresses the female parts.
So the suppression of females by the Y Chromosome is natural, and this is what evolution has intended and achieved, and the general oppression of the women in the society is just a natural extension of what is going on in cellular level. So all the male chauvinistic pigs can now breath a sigh of relief, "we can't help it. we are born this way".
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Actually, it does both: Turn genes on, and turn genes off.
Take for instance, "TDF Males".
(TDF == Testis Determining Factor, and is encoded by the SRY gene on the Y chromosome)
This single gene is sometimes translocated to the X chromosome in a rare mishap of cellular meiosis during gamete production.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome [wikipedia.org]
Since this is just a single gene out of the many on the Y chromosome, resulting phenotypical male offspring are infertile, and the "androgenization" of the offspring i
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The Y chromosome contains more than just SRY, and does quite a bit more.
SRSLY?
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Look, I didn't name it that ok?
Want a truly silly name? Look up "sonic hedgehog gene".
For realz.
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To be honest, I did check EntrezGene first to see whether there really is a SRSLY gene. Apparently not; all I got was SRSY, a little-boy-mouse gene.
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The human species has:
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,X, and Y.
How many do you count?
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Behind every great man... (Score:2)
Behind every great man, the saying goes, there's a great woman
Behing every failed man, there is a failed woman.
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Behind every running man, there is a woman with an axe.
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Behind every serial killer, there is a woman who created him.
well, uh, not surprising (Score:3)
Otherwise there would be very little genetic diversity between father and
son regarding fertility, and we know that to be false.
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Otherwise there would be very little genetic diversity between father and son regarding fertility, and we know that to be false.
Not necessarily; the determining factors in fertility could just as easily be on the autosomal chromosomes (the of which nearly everyone gets one copy from each parent, and aren't involved in sex determination). Given that these chromosomes make up most of our genomes, in fact, you'd kind of expect that.
X-X, X-Y, Y-Y (Score:1)
Women, X-X. Men, X-Y. Chuck Norris, Y-Y.
There is no chick in Chuck Norris.
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Women (Score:2)
Consider for a moment (Score:3)
And look at differences in the reproductive organs of men and women. Testes and Ovaries - just small deviations create each, and of course location.
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He was in my SO's lap. Now the SO is male.
What was he before?
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Just X.
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-- Evil, "Time Bandits"
Old news (Score:1)
You didn't finish it... (Score:5, Funny)
And behind every great woman, there's a man. Staring at her ass.
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Her donkey? [grin]
Isaac Asimov predicted this (Score:1)
Oh, give me a clone
Of my own flesh and bone
With its Y-chromosome changed to X
And when it is grown
Then my own little clone
Will be of the opposite sex.
More if you search for it.
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Many Y genes have gotten trans-scripted onto the X over time and the Y may just disappear leaving us with everyone being XX.
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Superheroes can't be gay!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTKSgf4NX_4 [youtube.com]
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The neo-feminists will not stand for it! This has to be another male-dominated science propaganda finding and must be a lie!
Marilyn Manjaw sides with you.
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You misunderestimated the significance of the finding. The fe(e) in female chromosomes responsible for controlling the ability of 'certain tissues' in both the male and female, presumably until the each has met some prerequisite for reproduction, like 'getting in touch with your 'inner feminine side' (as an alternative to aggression?). Maybe this will explain the success of the 'sneaky' less-than-dominant males who may not rule the harem but pass their genes on down the line none-the-less. Could it be that
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Could it be that this is the key to unlocking the code that allows men to employ cooperative, empathetic strategies to achieve success thus explaining the emergence of game theory from the example of men cooperating for the affection of women in bars?
No. It's about sperm production.
With 5% of the human genome residing on this chromosome, it isn't a surprise.
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Some of those feminists make even stupider arguments. It's perfectly alright for women to cooperatively solve problems together, but add a man to the equation, and the solution becomes "sexist".
If a gang of women need to pass through a door that is difficult to open, the strongest woman present will probably pull the door open, and the least strong women in the gang will duck through as quickly as possible. If a man and a feminist need to pass through that door, if the man opens and holds the door for the
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Yeah, and SOME black women are welfare queens. What's your point?
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Like welfare queens, femnazis ruin it for all of us.
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Sounds to me like you might be a racist. Black women? Welfare queens? What is YOUR point?
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That I, like you, should have used sarcasm tags?
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Heh - maybe you're right there. Point taken.
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You're okay, for a cracker.
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Matches my experience.
Re:There is _female_ in male? Sacrilege! (Score:4, Insightful)
>> domestic violence
SIGNIFICANTLY more males than females are assaulted and killed in society every day.
Perhaps not by their partner, but overall in society.
>> education access
Girls have been outperforming boys in school for many years now.
Also for many years, many more girls have been going into higher education than boys.
>> maternal mortality
Don't even get me started on government health spending.
Women live longer than men, but significantly more is spent on female-specific health issues.
No, what most (not all, but most) feminists do is perpetuate the notion of victimhood amongst females, and most women swallow this hook, line and sinker.
But if you do the research -- I mean actually look at the numbers -- you'll see that males cop it far worse than females.
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There are rational feminists out there, true. And they may well be concerned with the issues you quote. But many, many neo-feminists are not aiming at equality at all, they are aiming at female supremacy, and to them anything even remotely "male" is repulsive. That goes so far that there are now neo-feminist professors in Germany that want to discredit the scientific method as a "male" construction that is invalid. (In truth they just do not get it and want to continue to spout their ridiculous BS despite h
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No feminist would ever make a stupid argument like this...
...And that sounds a lot like No True Scotsman.
Sadly, I've personally heard actual feminists make equally-stupid arguments. One particular instance I recall was discrediting a physical-fitness study because it separated male and female participants. The study's conclusion had nothing to do with gender differences, but segregating the samples eliminated a variable. That didn't matter to the opposing extremist, though. She argued that since the male and female results were separated, each group was therefore
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No feminist would ever make a stupid argument like this...
...And that sounds a lot like No True Scotsman.
So No True Scotsman burns Straw Man?
Where do Lizard and Spock fit in?
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