When Women Take Over the World... Kind Of..

So I thought this article was really interesting since Dr. Choudhary always talks about this sort of thing in his genetics class. The article reminds us that there are only two significant genes which are contributed by the Y chromosome. The question, then, is whether or not the Y chromosome is still necessary. With recent research, genes were taken from infertile male mice with only the two contributed Y-linked genes and injected the immature spermatids into oocytes in a lab setting. In the infertile male mice, the genes were still expressed, but the gametes were never fully developed. The embryos were then transferred to surrogate females and offspring were produced. This was also repeated using additional Y-linked genes to test whether the addition of such genes resulted in even greater success. The addition of genes increased the amount of viable offspring. All offspring were also fertile. This shows that the Y chromosome itself is simply the vessel which carries these genes. Hypothetically speaking, this may mean that the X chromosome, if ever to obtain and carry these genes, may one day take the place of the Y chromosome. This was all conducted using advanced technology, though, so it’s still a long ways off. Talk about changing the textbooks, though! Can you imagine if this were to occur in a few generations (which is super unlikely, but humor me) how students would have to be taught that the Y chromosome USED to determine the sex of a mammal?! We also couldn’t joke anymore that everyone started out as a female, since it would still basically be true!