A Gene Mystery: How Are Rats With No Y Chromosome Born Male?

[Randi]

NY Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/science/amami-spiny-rat-y-chromosome-male.html   

By Steph Yin  05/12/2017

In most mammals, us included, biological sex is determined by a lottery between two letters: X and Y, the sex chromosomes. Inherit one X each from mom and dad, and develop ovaries, a womb and a vagina. Inherit an X from mom and a Y from dad, and develop testes and a penis.

But there are rare, mysterious exceptions. A small number of rodents have no Y chromosomes, yet are born as either females or males, not hermaphrodites. Now, scientists may be one step closer to figuring out how sex determination works in one of these rodents.

[josie76]

I don't have a link to any studies handy, but it's already known that the Y chromosome is a trigger for a hormone production (I can't remember the name) that tells the early genital stem cells to form testes. It's then the testes production of androgen that converts all of the forming structures over to male. Hence the known link between DES as a powerful estrogen receptor trigger and androgen receptor blocker (full agonist for both E receptors with 7times attraction to one E receptor over the other and 75% antagonist to androgen receptors) in many cases of ambiguous genitalia in babies while it was prescribed to humans.

Chromosomes just trigger chemicals. It's the chemicals that make things happen.

[Gertrude]

And chemicals trigger genes, which is epi-genetics.


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