Articles tagged Chromosomes
(37 results)

Bdelloid rotifers have been veiled in mystery for decades. Despite extensive studies of this class of tiny freshwater invertebrates, no one has observed any trace of sex: no proven males, hermaphrodites, mating, or meiosis. Unlike other asexual organisms, which tend to be short-lived in evolutionary history, the apparently asexual bdelloid rotifers have managed to persist…

One of the major risk factors for autoimmune diseases is being born with two copies of the X chromosome. For example, women—who typically carry two Xs—face around ten times the risk of lupus, while men with lupus are around 15 times more likely than the general population to carry two Xs and a Y (Klinefelter…

Y chromosomes have come and gone many times during evolutionary history. Take beetles. When Heath Blackmon and Jeff Demuth modeled sex chromosome evolution in more than a thousand beetle species, they found the Y chromosome had independently evolved around 65 times in the suborder Adephaga alone. And as fast as this group evolved new Y chromosomes,…

Do aging males make poorer quality sperm? Older mothers face a well-established risk of producing eggs with chromosome abnormalities, but it is less clear how age affects meiosis in males. In the February issue of GENETICS, Vrooman et al. investigated chromosome dynamics during spermatogenesis in mice of different ages. They found that meiotic errors increased…