Y: waving, not drowning
Analysis of the Y chromosome suggests how it is saving itself from evolving to extinction
Jun 17, 2003
The human Y chromosome contains 60 million base pairs (Mb) of DNA, it is haploid, and 95% of it is nonrecombining. Helen Skaletsky from the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and colleagues report in the first of two papers in the June 19
In the second paper, they describe both comparative sequencing of the great ape Y chromosome, and the mechanism of gene conversion by which the Y chromosome repairs mutations that occur within these genes (
Skaletsky et al. sequenced 97% of the...