New steps in the meiosis chromosome dance

Where would we be without meiosis and recombination? For a start, none of us sexually reproducing organisms would be here, because that's how sperm and eggs are made. And when meiosis doesn't work properly, it can lead to ...

Tree frogs with foreign sex chromosomes are less fit

During the last glaciation, a huge ice shield reached up to the region of today's Berlin. By the time it started to melt about 20.000 years ago, it enabled a gradual re-colonization of the northern latitudes by many plant ...

X chromosome inactivation

Each cell in a woman's body contains two X chromosomes. One of these chromosomes is switched off, because nobody can live with two active X chromosomes. Hendrik Marks and Henk Stunnenberg, molecular biologists at Radboud ...

DNA which only females have

In many animal species, the chromosomes differ between the sexes. The male has a Y chromosome. In some animals, however, for example birds, it is the other way round. In birds, the females have their own sex chromosome, the ...

Sex chromosomes—why the Y genes matter

Several genes have been lost from the Y chromosome in humans and other mammals, according to research published in the open access journal Genome Biology. The study shows that essential Y genes are rescued by relocating to ...

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