Related topics: men

Decoding the shared genetic toolkit for male sex determination

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen have broken new ground by demonstrating that an HMG-box gene in brown algae is crucial for determining male sex. This breakthrough significantly expands our ...

Showing love on Valentine's Day by embracing disability

Valentine's Day is a time when love and intimacy are celebrated with fervor. Yet, the challenges some face in this regard are not often recognized. In particular, people with disabilities face discrimination and obstacles ...

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Sex

In biology, sex is a process of combining and mixing genetic traits, often resulting in the specialization of organisms into male and female types (or sexes). Sexual reproduction involves combining specialized cells (gametes) to form offspring that inherit traits from both parents. Gametes can be identical in form and function (known as isogametes), but in many cases an asymmetry has evolved such that two sex-specific types of gametes (heterogametes) exist: male gametes are small, motile, and optimized to transport their genetic information over a distance, while female gametes are large, non-motile and contain the nutrients necessary for the early development of the young organism.

An organism's sex is defined by the gametes it produces: males produce male gametes (spermatozoa, or sperm) while females produce female gametes (ova, or egg cells); individual organisms which produce both male and female gametes are termed hermaphroditic. Frequently, physical differences are associated with the different sexes of an organism; these sexual dimorphisms can reflect the different reproductive pressures the sexes experience.

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