X chromosome is extra diverse

sea-maid submitted, created time 3 months 1 week (www.sciencenews.org)

Men who father children with multiple women are responsible for “extra” diversity on the X chromosome, a new study of six different populations suggests.

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When a Person Is Neither XX nor XY: A Q&A with Geneticist Eric Vilain

freeman submitted, created time 1 year 5 months (www.sciam.com)

About one in 4,500 babies show ambiguous genitalia at birth, such as a clitoris that looks like a penis, or vice versa. For the Insights story, "Going Beyond X and Y," appearing in the June 2007 issue of Scientific American, Sally Lehrman talked with noted geneticist Eric Vilain of the University of California, Los Angeles, about the biology of sex determination, gender identity and the psychology and politics behind both.

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Dosage compensation goes global

athena submitted, created time 1 year 8 months (www.sciencedirect.com)

"In many organisms, females have two X chromosomes whereas males have just one. This natural X chromosome monosomy is not lethal, because of dosage compensation. Although numerous elegant genetic, biochemical and cytological experiments have been used to build up the mechanistic framework describing this specialized transcriptional control, dosage compensation is a chromosome-wide regulatory mechanism and is best studied at that level. Microarray techniques give us the chance to look simultaneously at the expression of all the genes in response to dose

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