Thursday, March 18, 2010

Interestingly different Sexes are at War -The Genetic War!

Can regular altercations (arising from basic behavior) between men and women be blamed on to their genes?

Basic instinct of female fruit flies to make more and more eggs, while that of males to increase their success of mating and fertilization, can now be blamed onto their genes, as shown by researchers at Uppsala University, Sweden. Ted Morrow (leader of this research) said that the genes that are most beneficial for one sex, say female, are most disadvantageous for the other (male) resulting in "conflict of interests" and, the saga begins.


For humans, sex chromosome for "Male" are XY, and for "Female": XX. And, its interesting to see that these most of the conflicting genes reside on X-chromosome.




 For more details:
Original news @Scicasts: Genetic War of the Sexes
Published paper @PLoS: The Sexually Antagonistic Genes of Drosophila melanogaster 
Image source: http://www.tetrasomy18p.ca/chromosome.jpg

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