Genetics + Genomics

In the 19th century, mathematical formulas didn’t figure much into biology. But when Austrian monk Gregor Mendel crossed and counted his round and wrinkled peas, he found something unexpected: a pattern.

In the biological battle between the sexes, the Y chromosome has suffered defeat after defeat. The male-determining chromosome has seen its gene supply shrink from more than 1,000 genes when sex chromosomes first evolved, to what scientists once thought was only a handful of genes, a downward trend predicted to continue until the Y disappeared altogether.

For decades the human Y chromosome, the male sex chromosome, has been the Rodney Dangerfield of human genetics: "it don't get no respect." For long, the Y was considered to be little more than a smaller, less stable version of the X. Now, new evidence from Dr. Page and his collaborators at the Whitehead Institute, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Washington reveals that the Y chromosome has led an independent existence after all.

Map Provides Landmarks Needed to Begin Large-Scale Sequencing of Human Chromosome