Y Chromosome Not Likely to Fade Away
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
The human Y chromosome -- the DNA chunk that makes a man a man -- has lost so many genes over time that some scientists have suspected it might disappear in 10 million years. But a new study says it’ll stick around.
Researchers found no sign of gene loss over the last 6 million years, suggesting the chromosome is “doing a pretty good job of maintaining itself,” said researcher David Page of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass.
That agrees with prior calculations that suggested the rate of gene loss would slow as the chromosome evolved, Page and study coauthors note in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature.
