• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

The Human Y Chromosome Is Evolving Way Faster Than The X Chromosome

June 23, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

For the first time, researchers have fully sequenced the sex chromosomes of non-human primates, revealing how the male-specific Y chromosome is evolving at an incredible speed while the X chromosome remains largely static. Comparing these findings to the human genome, the study authors discovered that our own species is very much part of this evolutionary dance, with a rapidly-changing genetic code along the male sex chromosome.

Advertisement

All humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes, one of which comprises the sex chromosomes. For females, this entails two X chromosomes, while males have one X and one Y.

Advertisement

The researchers behind the new study generated complete end-to-end reference genomes for the X and Y chromosomes of five great apes – including chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, Bornean orangutans and Sumatran orangutans – as well as one lesser ape, the siamang gibbon.

Throwing humans into the mix, the researchers were able to compare the readouts for seven different primates. In doing so, they found that Y chromosomes tend to differ massively between species, while X chromosomes are largely alike.

For instance, over 90 percent of ape X chromosome sequences match up with the human X chromosome, indicating a relatively small degree of change across millions of years of evolution. In contrast, only 14 to 27 percent of ape Y chromosomes align with the human version, suggesting an enormous amount of rapid change.

“The extent of the differences between the Y chromosomes of these species was very surprising,” said study author Kateryna Makova in a statement.  “Some of these species diverged from the human lineage only seven million years ago, which is not a lot of time in terms of evolution. This shows that the Y chromosomes are evolving very fast.”

Advertisement

Such extensive variation is likely due to the fact that the Y chromosome doesn’t exchange much genetic information with other chromosomes, which means it tends to pick up a lot of deletions and other types of mutations. As a consequence, the Y chromosome has been getting progressively shorter over time.

“We found the ape Y to be shrinking, accumulating many mutations and repeats, and losing genes,” said Makova. “Because of this degradation, the Y chromosome has been suggested to be on its way towards extinction in mammals,” write the study authors in their paper.

However, the team found that while the Y chromosome may be getting smaller, it’s unlikely to vanish completely as some of its genes are “evolving under purifying selection.” In other words, certain genes are protected by safety mechanisms that keep important sequences intact.

One of these survival strategies involves the use of palindromes, which entail gene sequences that repeat in a mirror image of each other, creating two identical copies that butt ends. As a result, any damage that occurs to one copy can be fixed by exchanging information with the adjacent stretch of matching DNA.

Advertisement

“Having these genes in palindromes is like keeping a backup copy,” says study author Adam Phillippy. According to the researchers, the genes protected by palindromes tend to vary greatly from species to species, although many are involved in spermatogenesis.

Given that the Y chromosome is essential for the continued existence of males, these purifying selection mechanisms provide a vital safety net for the future of humankind. And despite previous suspicions that the XY combo may soon be a thing of the past, Makova insists that “the Y chromosome is unlikely to disappear any time soon.”

The study has been published in the journal Nature.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. China vehicle sales slid 18% in August – industry body
  2. Fed’s Powell: Reopening economic bottlenecks could be “more enduring”
  3. Nomophobia Is On The Increase – Do You Have It?
  4. Japanese Mission Sends Back “Unprecedented” Up-Close Photo Of Space Debris

Source Link: The Human Y Chromosome Is Evolving Way Faster Than The X Chromosome

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Experimental Nanoparticle “Super-Vaccines” Stop Breast, Pancreatic, And Skin Cancers In Their Tracks
  • New Nightmare Fuel Unlocked: Watch The First Known Capture Of A Shrew By A False Widow Spider
  • Peculiar Glow In The Milky Way Might Be Dark Matter Signature
  • “I Was Scared To Death”: Missouri’s Great Cobra Scare Of 1953 Was Eventually Solved After 35 Years
  • Two Spacecraft To Fly Through Comet 3I/ATLAS’s Ion Tail – Will They Be Able To Catch Something?
  • Pioneering Heavy Water Detection Suggests Earth’s Water Might Be Older Than The Sun
  • PhD Students’ Groundbreaking New Technique Rescues JWST’s Highest Resolution Data
  • Popcorn-Like Parasites And Weird Worms Among 14 New Species Discovered In The World’s Oceans
  • Poem From 1181 CE Cairo Appears To Reference A Rare Galactic Supernova
  • With “Iridescent Live Colors”, Newly Discovered Beautiful Dwarfgoby Lives Up To Its Name (Mostly)
  • “Anti-Tail” And Odd 594-Kilometer Feature Found On Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS By Keck Observatory
  • Why Do We Call It A “Hamburger” When It Doesn’t Contain Ham?
  • What Aristotle Got Wrong About The Octopus
  • The World’s Largest Island Is Shrinking And Shifting
  • Record-Breaking Marshmallow Planet – It’s A Cold, Peculiar World On A Very Slanted Orbit
  • Distinctive Rocks Might Be Remnants Of Earth Before The Collision That Made The Moon
  • Bright Northern Lights Across America Expected This Week As 3 Coronal Mass Ejections Fly Towards Earth
  • Brain Implant Enables Paralyzed Man To Feel And Use Objects Using Someone Else’s Hands
  • “This Is A Really Big Deal”: Brain Training Significantly Improves Key Neurochemical Levels In World First
  • “Wholly Unexpected”: First-Ever Fossil Paranthropus Hand Raises Questions About Earliest Tool Makers’ Identity
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version