'Men's sex chromosome is doomed'

Submitted by Mastodon on Mon, 2013-04-22 00:12

Article here. Excerpt:

'The poorly designed Y chromosome that makes men is degrading rapidly and will disappear, even if humans are still around.
...
"The X chromosome is all alone in the male, but in the female it has a friend so it can swap bits and repair itself. If the Y gets a hit it's a downward spiral."

The X has about 1000 genes left, too many relating to sex and intelligence, she says.

The smaller Y started with about 1700 genes but only has 45 left, and that's mostly "junk".

"It is a lovely example of what I call dumb design," she said.

"It is an evolutionary accident."

If humans don't become extinct, new sex-determining genes and chromosomes will evolve, maybe leading to the evolution of new hominid species.

This had happened in the Japanese spiny rat, which had survived the loss of its Y, she said.'

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Yeah, just have to wait 5 million years is all. Sure, humans'll make it that long! :)

But seriously, the Japanese spiny rat? Is she serious? It's nearly extinct, but she left that detail out. As for monosexed species, these are also very limited in range and very delicate; they can't go far from their range w/out exposing themselves to diseases and parasites they can't fend off. Also, they don't evolve very fast, if at all, and struggle to maintain their numbers.

So, the nasty old Y chromosome must go. Celebrate its pending (well, 5 million years, but pending nonetheless) demise. It's the product of "dumb design", and *must go*!

The X chromosome is a dumb design too. I mean, it produced one Jenny Graves. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

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Submitted by Matt on Mon, 2013-04-22 01:59

Took a quick look online and found predictably that Professor Jenny Graves is a feminist and takes a "feminist view on sex determining genetics". It should be obvious Graves has bought her "feminist view" to her research with her claims of "inherent fragility", "dumb design", "evolutionary accident". She's been making the same claims for years. A more recent study by Jennifer Hughes a research Scientist at Whitehead Institute found:

"that the Y has not disappeared yet and it has been around for hundreds of millions of years. She stated that it has shown that it can outsmart genetic decay in the absence of "normal" recombination and that most of its genes on the human Y exhibit signs of purifying selection. She noted that it has added at least eight different genes, many of which have subsequently expanded in copy number, and that it has not lost any genes since the human and chimpanzee diverged ~6 million years ago."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22083302

Also this from the New York Times:

"Far from being in a state of decay, the Y chromosome is the fastest-changing part of the human genome and is constantly renewing itself.
...

Dr. Page’s new finding is surprising because it shows that the Y chromosome has achieved an unexpected salvation. The hallmark of the Y chromosome now turns out to be renewal and reinvigoration, once the unnecessary burden of X-related genes has been shed. “Natural selection is shaping the Y and keeping it vital to a degree that is really at odds with the idea of the last 50 years of a rotting Y chromosome,” Dr. Page said. “It is now clear that the Y chromosome is by far the most rapidly evolving part of the human and chimp genomes.” This does not mean that men are evolving faster than women but it could be that the Y’s rate of change drives or influences the evolution of the rest of the human genome in ways that now need to be assessed."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/science/14gene.html?_r=0

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Submitted by Broadsword on Mon, 2013-04-22 10:34

The way this issue is presented is most frustrating.

"If humans don't become extinct, new sex-determining genes and chromosomes will evolve, maybe leading to the evolution of new hominid species.

This had happened in the Japanese spiny rat, which had survived the loss of its Y, she said.'"

Okay, so basically, males are getting new sex chromosomes. Yay! So wtf is with this story? How is it "bad news for men" as she says? So basically the point of this story is that the Y will disappear and be replaced with something else to determine male sex. Males will still be here, just like the Japanese spiny rat also still has males.

Maybe the Y will disappear, maybe it won't. Either way, men aren't going anywhere as new sex determining mechanisms will just take over.

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Submitted by PatriciaR on Mon, 2013-04-22 11:46