How a Genetic Man Is Actually a Woman
	We know that boys have XY sex chromosomes, while girls have XX. However, in some cases, newborn girls can be XY. A new research published in the Nature journal clarifies why some XY embryos, instead of being born as males, develop ovaries and evolve as girls: it’s because of a gene called Sox9, involved in formation of the testes, and other two control genes. "There are a surprisingly large number of cases where this pro ... [read more >>]
	09 May 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Britons and Anglo-Saxons Mixed
	There is no doubt that the English language rooted from a dialect brought in Britain from northern Germany. When Romans left Britain at the beginning of the 5th century, Britain fragmented in small Celt kingdoms and rival domains, which employed Germanic mercenaries in their inner fights, or against the Picts (a seemingly non Indo-European population from Scotland) and the Irish. The legend says that a leader called Vortigen opened the ... [read more >>]
	05 May 2008, 04:58GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How to Skip Sex
	Sex is considered the engine of the evolution. Without sex, we would all be similar clones. Sex brings diversity, but also it can repair the effects of negative mutations. Healthy genes from one parent can counteract the presence of a damaged (mutated) gene from the other parent, resulting healthier offspring. Thus, theoretically, asexual species should accumulate harmful mutations over time, that would doom the species. But some micro ... [read more >>]
	07 April 2008, 05:23GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Crusaders Had Sex With the Natives
	Those thousands of knights went to the Middle East during the 11th-13th centuries to free the Holy Land from the hands of the Muslims, but despite their religiosity, they found some moments to have some hanky-panky. In the end, their wives from England, France, Germany and Italy were far away and many ended mixing with the inhabitants. In a recent research published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, DNA "forensic ... [read more >>]
	28 March 2008, 17:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Vitamins and Healthy Sperm
	Mexican men know the secret of the chili. It's about folate, a vitamin abundant in liver, leafy green vegetables, citrus fruits, sunflower seeds and legumes (beans and their relatives). It may sound more familiar to you that women of child-bearing age must have proper levels of folate (vitamin B9) in their diet for delivering healthy babies, but a new study published in the journal Human Reproduction and carried out by a team at the U ... [read more >>]
	20 March 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A History of the Sex Chromosomes
	It seems simple: XX sex chromosomes make a female, XY sex chromosomes make a male. But sex is an evolutionary achievement which did not appear just like that. A new research published in the journal "PLoS" points to the great similarities between the DNA sequences that determine the sex of plants and animals and the DNA that encodes the mating types in certain fungi (fungi do not have differentiated sexes, but matin ... [read more >>]
	18 March 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

First Sex Chromosome Gene Connected to Meiosis and Male Sterility
	Just having a XY sex chromosome formula won't make you a man. Nor the XX formula makes you a woman. Increasing evidence shows that human sex is not caused by sex chromosomes, but by genes placed on those chromosomes. Over 50 genes involved in sex expression have been found so far. 7 operate in the brain even before the gonads are formed. Now add a new one: a team at the University of Pennsylvania has detected a gene, TEX11, ... [read more >>]
	15 March 2008, 04:53GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Couch Potatoes Live 10 Years Less!
	The remote control saves you from wasting too much energy changing the channels. The only problem is that now and then you have to go to the bathroom.... Damn it! But don't worry: you will be saved of too much effort, as you will live 10 years less because of this couch potato lifestyle. This is the result of a British research led by Tim Spector, at St. Thomas’ hospital in London, on the lengths of telomeres, the tips of our chromoso ... [read more >>]
	30 January 2008, 02:57GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Will Your Child Look Like?
	Kids look like their parents or grandparents, and brothers and sisters look alike. How can you predict the traits of your future child? This is the science of heredity. Heredity operates on genes (made of DNA) placed on chromosomes, located inside a cell's nucleus. Each human has 46 chromosomes, arranged in 23 pairs, half coming from the mother and half from the father. The chromosomes of a pair are similar but not identical. Wome ... [read more >>]
	15 January 2008, 16:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Why Are Males More Evolved Than Females?
	Males change faster than females. Just look at a peacock’s tail feathers compared to the plain peahen. In most species, males are brighter and better singers, competing for getting as much as possible mates. This way they experience sexual selection. This overdrive compared to females puzzle the scientists, as they share the same genes with the females. In a new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, ... [read more >>]
	15 November 2007, 06:19GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Sex War: 90% or 50% Females?
	There is a sex ratio of about 1:1 in most species, including humans, meaning that an approximately equal number of males and females are produced. For the first time, geneticists at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, have discovered a genetic mechanism delivering this balanced ratio, at least valid for fruit flies, as wrote in the article published in the November issue of PLoS Biology. Wild fruit flies display the 1:1 sex ... [read more >>]
	07 November 2007, 06:42GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Why Do Sex Chromosomes Change So Quickly?
	Being male or female is decided from the womb. And in most cases, the key is held by sex determination genes on the sex chromosomes. The genes connected to sexual development have evolved remarkably little along the evolutionary of our race. Opposite sex determining genes, sex chromosomes are among the most fast changing bodies of the genome. The team made by Sander van Doorn (Santa Fe Institute, USA) and Mark Kirkpatrick (University o ... [read more >>]
	22 October 2007, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Testosterone Insensitivity Turns Men Into Women
	The classic knowledge states that men have an XY pair of sex chromosomes, while women an XX one. Recent studies showed that many genes can bypass this arrangement and turn XX individuals into men. Now, a German-American team has discovered that the body's reactivity to testosterone is even more important than the presence of the Y chromosome in deciding the sex of the future baby. The scientists compared individuals with complete ... [read more >>]
	20 October 2007, 03:58GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The First Synthetic Life Form Ever: Synthia
	Some play God and play it tough. The famous US scientist Craig Venter is going to create the first ever artificial life form. He has managed to build a synthetic chromosome employing chemicals obtained in the lab and the new achievement could lead to new energy sources to fight off the negative effects of global warming, but also it would theoretically be "a very important philosophical step in the history of our species," Venter ... [read more >>]
	08 October 2007, 02:54GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Sex Chromosome-Linked Brain Retard, Much More Complex Than Previously Thought
	The sex chromosomes come with nasty effects, like the fragile X Syndrome (FXS), a genetic disease experienced by about one in 4,000 males and one in 6,000 females, and it is the most common cause of genetic mental impairment. The mutation of the FMR1 leads to the synthesis of an inactive FMR1 protein, named the fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP). The lack of this protein impairs the brain development with severe cogn ... [read more >>]
	12 September 2007, 06:45GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How to Create a Man from a Genetic Woman
	Some men cut off their penises and balls to ‘become’ women. Some women shoot tones of testosterone into their veins to ‘become’ men. But a University of Adelaide team has found a method of getting a male mouse lacking the Y "masculinizing" chromosome by manipulating a single gene in the developing fetus. Normally, males' sex chromosome pair is made of one X and one Y chromosome while the females have two X chrom ... [read more >>]
	20 August 2007, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Genetic Screening in Embryos Rather Kills Them
	After running through all options, in vitro fertilization (IVF) is the last stop. By then, most women are already around their 40's. But with the increasing age, the chances to give birth to malformed or genetically diseased babies are high. That's why many of these women undergo pre-implantation genetic screening (PGS), which means the removal of one or two cells from the embryo three days after fertilization, to be examin ... [read more >>]
	05 July 2007, 04:29GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Mammoths Return Amongst Us
	Currently, we can see mammoths only in animation, but modern science could bring back them 'live and kicking'. DNA, the heredity molecule, has everything to do with this issue. Complete DNA sequences have been decoded for many living species, like humans, dogs and mice. And the DNA of long-extinct species can also be found preserved in bones or bodies encountered in dry caves or inside ice, for example. "Retrieval of DNA ... [read more >>]
	27 June 2007, 05:17GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Junk DNA, Involved in Hereditary Diseases and Cloning Success
	95 % of our genome has been thought to be just junk, or simply a useless desert. Up until now, as some scientists have started to disagree on this idea. One of them is Professor Alexandre Reymond, from the Center for Integrative Genomics, University of Lausanne, Switzerland and the Department of Genetic Medicine, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland, who now claims that the previously considered "junk" DNA is actually teemin ... [read more >>]
	20 June 2007, 04:49GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Can a Genetic Woman Be... a Woman?
	Maleness is given by that Y chromosome that leads to the XY formula while females are XX, with two X chromosomes. That's why in the early development of the female fertilized egg, one of the two X chromosomes must be silenced. When by accident this does not happen, severe genetic diseases get installed. Both X chromosomes possess a suicide gene (XIST), which, when activated, stops other genes’ activity behind a RNA barri ... [read more >>]
	13 June 2007, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Did the Chromosome Splitter Appear?
	When chromosomes divide, they look like molecular Siamese twins: two stretches of DNA joined along a portion named the centromere. Centromeres ensure that when the new two DNA molecules separate, new cells present the right DNA amount. The origin of the centromeres is unknown. A new controversial theory states that crucial innovations started out at the ends of ancient chromosomes. The DNA sequence of the centromeres varies quite a ... [read more >>]
	05 June 2007, 05:16GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Our Sex, Determined Not by Chromosomes but by Over 50 Genes!
	Scientists come with increasing evidence that human sex is not determined by sex chromosomes but by genes placed on those chromosomes. This may explain the numerous cases of ambiguous genitalia in humans and why an individual's genitals might not match the reproductive organs inside. "What really matters is what people feel they are in terms of gender, not what their family or doctors think they should be," said Eric Vil ... [read more >>]
	22 May 2007, 17:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Kangaroos Prove It: The Gene of Female Sexual Development Is a Fake
	Kangaroos hit again on one of the myths of the sex genetics. When it was discovered in the early '90s, the XIST gene was regarded as essential in the process of inactivating the supplementary X chromosome in females. The gene has been believed to switch off the extra X chromosome during embryonic development and an entire field of research focused on this gene in an attempt of getting detailed information on how genes co ... [read more >>]
	01 May 2007, 07:19GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Birds' Sex Is Very Different
	We all know that in mammals, humans included, sex determination is chromosomal. That means that the composition of the chromosomes determines the gender of the individual: XX (two X chromosomes) means female, XY (one X chromosome and one Y chromosome) – male. Genes on Y are masculinizing, that’s why in chromosomal defect when more X chromosomes are present, just one Y says male. In females, one of the X chromosomes are in ... [read more >>]
	22 March 2007, 08:16GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia