J.
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> "The original Y chromosome contained around 1,500 genes, but during
> the ensuing 300 million years all but about 50 were inactivated or
> lost. Overall, this gives an inactivation rate of five genes per
> million years. The presence of many genes that have lost their
> function (pseudogenes) on the Y chromosome indicates that this
> process of attrition is continuing, so that even these key genes will
> be lost. At the present rate of decay, the Y chromosome will self-
> destruct in around 10 million years" (R. John Aitken and Jennifer A.
> Marshall Graves, "Human Spermatozoa: The Future of Sex," Nature 415
> 28 February 2002).
>
> Subsequent research, to the relief of male scientists in particular
> and the weaker sex in general, has demonstrated that Y still
> possesses 78 genes and that it may have stabilized itself through
> gene conversion, i.e., "the non-reciprocal transfer of sequence
> information from one DNA duplex to another," the type of
> recombination which "has been studied most extensively in fungi"
> (Helen Skaletsky, David C. Page, et al., "The Male-specific Region of
> the Human Y Chromosome Is a Mosaic of Discrete Sequence Classes,"
> Nature, 423, 19 June 2003).
>
> Rumors of the demises of Y may have been exaggerated, but Y still
> ain't as good as X. :->
>
> Yoshie Furuhashi
> <http://montages.blogspot.com>
> <http://monthlyreview.org>
> <http://mrzine.org>
>
>
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>