This is (approximately) the title of a bioinformatics and computational biology talk that will be given at Georgia Tech on Wednesday 10/26. This hits close to home for about half of us. Are we doomed? Should we even bother?
Here is the speaker and abstract:
Dr. Helen Skaletsky
Whitehead Institute, MIT,
Cambridge MA
"Do Human Males Have Future?"
The human Y chromosome, transmitted clonally through males, contains
far fewer genes than the sexually recombining autosome from which it
evolved. The enormity of this evolutionary decline has led to
prediction that the Y chromosome will be completely destroyed within
10 million years. Recent sequencing of human, chimpanzee, and mouse Y
chromosomes revealed evolutionary mechanisms operating on mammalian Ys, not taken into account by oversimplified "impending demise" model.
So when we are all gone, just remember that you heard it here first. The end is nigh!
I saw something about this recently. IIRC the recent data (probably what the last sentence refers to) suggests that Ys have stabilized in the last few Myr, so women may not necessarily have to start cloning themselves. Though they might wish to do so anyway... :D
ReplyDelete10 million years! no furthur commnet. -jing
ReplyDeleteThe day of reckoning is upon us! Gather up all your canned food before there aren't any males left! The females simply have to understand that this won't last forever. What if the 10 million years were a field-theoretic calculation? Then they could be off by, oh, 20 orders of magnitude or so. We could go at any second! :) [Clearly, I need to adopt by Dr. Stranglove voice for this impending doom.]
ReplyDeleteOr I could stop making inane comments and revise my grant proposal. Whatever works.