For something very logic-driven, Science has an impact that mostly feels like a surprise. A recent study suggests that the Y chromosome that plays a significant role in determining the gender of a person, is degenerating. Jennifer A. Marshall Graves, a renowned Professor of Genetics and Vice Chancellor’s Fellow, has highlighted that the human Y chromosome is facing a critical decline.
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Over the past 300 million years, it has shed 1,393 of its original 1,438 genes. If this trend continues, it could lose the remaining 45 genes within just 10 million years. The same study suggests that this would lead to our extinction. It then goes on to say that two rodent branches have survived after they lost their Y chromosome. But what does it say about males?
Given that the Y chromosome is present in males, this study sounds like it points at the disappearance of men. That’s not the case (so no good news there). What this study also says is that there may be an alternative sex-determining gene in the future that will lead to the continuation of the male offspring. So men are probably here to stay.
Biology is weirdly surprising, but clearly, this doesn’t change a lot for our social life.
