Sex differences

Whitehead Institute Member David Page and colleagues have discovered that the so-called inactive X chromosome contributes a lot more to gene expression—and gene regulation—than its name implies.

Research from Whitehead Institute Member David Page’s lab shows that the so-called inactive X chromosome, the mostly silent second X chromosome in females, plays a much more active role in gene expression and gene regulation than previously thought, with implications for how we think about sex differences in health and disease.

Jordana Bloom is a postdoc in Whitehead Institute Member David Page’s lab studying how hormonal changes during menopause affect gene expression throughout the body. We sat down with Bloom to learn more about her and her experiences in and out of the lab.

Rebecca Harris, a physician-scientist at Whitehead Institute’s Brit J. d’Arbeloff Center for Women’s Health, has received a prestigious funding award from the NIH’s Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women's Health (BIRCWH) program.

Whitehead Institute scientists investigate germ cells — the cells that never cease to exist

Genes that remain on these volatile chromosomes are essential for the animal to live, suggests a new paper from the Page Lab at Whitehead Institute

Laura Blanton is a postdoc in Whitehead Institute Director David Page’s lab investigating sex differences in human health. We sat down with Blanton to learn more about her and her experiences in and out of the lab.

The lab of Whitehead Member David Page has examined a series of regions on the Y chromosome called amplicons.

The human Y chromosome has over the course of millions of years of evolution managed to preserve a small set of genes that has ensured not only its own survival but also the survival of men. Moreover, the vast majority of these tenacious genes appear to have little if any role in sex determination or sperm production. Taken together, these remarkable finding suggest that because these Y-linked genes are active across the body, they may actually be contributing to differences in disease susceptibility and severity observed between men and women.

Painstaking new analysis of the genetic sequence of the X chromosome—long perceived as the “female” counterpart to the male-associated Y chromosome—reveals that large portions of the X have evolved to play a specialized role in sperm production.