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Human Males Evolve At a Faster Pace Than Females
Tisha_AH writes "A report by the Whitehead Institute indicates that the human Y chromosome present in males is evolving at a furious pace. Across the chromosome there can be as much as a 33% difference within humans alone. The portions of the chromosome evolving fastest are related to sperm production."
Contrary to a widely held scientific theory that the mammalian Y chromosome is slowly decaying or stagnating, new evidence suggests that in fact the Y is actually evolving quite rapidly through continuous, wholesale renovation.
If I had a nickel for every time I had a nickel, I'd be richcursive!
Right, but the gene distribution present within the population is indicative of the changes in genotype within the population.
The notion of evolving males is not silly. That's why peacocks have big bright displays, while peahens are boring brown. (This is even within the wild population of peacocks.)
This is called "sex selection," and Darwin wrote extensively about it.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
It could simply be taken as a form of compliment - specifically, by way of self-deprecation. It's not uncommon, nor considered problematic in many cultures. (As one who has not yet subscribed to any particular culture, I have no opinion as to whether it offends me or not.)
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This has been known for a long time. It is called "male driven evolution". This happens because in humans (and most animals) the cells producing sperms divide about 6 times more than the egg cells. And guess what: studies in a human gene that has a homologue in both X and Y chromosomes, showed that (you guessed it) the Y homologue changes about 6 times faster than the X one.
Did I say old news? 1947 old:
“The primordial oocytes are mostly if not all formed at birth, whereas spermatogonia go on dividing throughout the sexual life of a male. So if mutation is due to faulty copying of genes at a nuclear division, we might expect it to be commoner in males than females.”
“ we should expect higher mutability in the male to be a general property of human and perhaps other vertebrate genes.”
J. B. S. Haldane. 1947. The mutation rate of the gene for haemophilia and its segregation ratios in males and females. Ann. Eugen. 13:262-271.
I don't mind dating a girl that has been with everybody, as long as she had a good shower afterwards.
If the Y contained nothing, then males would inherit exactly zero traits from their fathers.
That bit is wrong... fathers provide 23 chromosomes in total, just like mothers. Daughters inherit plenty of traits from their fathers, after all, and they don't have a Y chromosome.
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God I hate this kind of shit
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
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You're horribly out of date, circa 2003 when I was in undergrad, there were about half a dozen geenes, including those (as mentioned in TFS) related to sperm production.
Also, if you have a wall that you paint once a year, and a second wall that you also paint once a year, but additionally paint a small corner of the second wall weekly as well, which wall gets painted more often? The second: while most of the wall is not as often changed, that doesn't negate the fact that part of it is changed more frequently.
Same thing: most of the DNA in a male changes at the same rate as in a female, but part of it changes faster.
Also, mutations on non-coding DNA could turn it into coding DNA. Also note that the Y chromosome is partially haploid - this makes sense with that - males are the test subjects of the species (with allele crossover, although rare genes could hypothetically get tossed on and off the Y chromosome.)
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The headline plays with the common association between "evolution" and "improvement" in order to gather angry responses and its fair share of taunting.
No it doesn't. "To evolve" is a neutral term, quite apart from "better" and "worse". If people want to get riled up over that, it's their own damn fault.