Sex differences

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.

Whitehead Institute Director David Page appeared last night on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report to engage in a little lively banter about the future of the human Y chromosome.