Study Dispels Theories of Y Chromosome's Demise

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140109175736.htm

Jan. 9, 2014 — A comparison of Y chromosomes in eight African and eight European men dispels the common notion that the Y's genes are mostly unimportant and that the chromosome is destined to dwindle and disappear.

"The Y chromosome has lost 90 percent of the genes it once shared with the X chromosome, and some scientists have speculated that the Y chromosome will disappear in less than 5 million years," said evolutionary biologist Melissa A. Wilson Sayres, a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of the new analysis.

Some mammals have already lost their Y chromosome, though they still have males and females and reproduce normally.

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"Our study demonstrates that the genes that have been maintained, and those that migrated from the X to the Y, are important, and the human Y is going to stick around for a long while," she said.

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