Everybody is talking about the ‘master of manliness’ disappearing from the face of this Earth. Will men go extinct? With the Y chromosome steadily shrinking over the past 300 million years, a new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences claims that the Y chromosome is “running out of time” and men could eventually disappear. According to Jennifer Graves, a distinguished Professor and Vice-Chancellor’s fellow at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, “If this trend continues, the Y chromosome could disappear entirely.
” The Y chromosome, one of the two sex chromosomes that determine the sex of humans and other mammals is in danger. It’s a known fact that males usually have one X and one Y chromosome (XY) as compared to females who have two X chromosomes (XX). Prof Jenny says, “The loss of genes from our Y chromosome is occurring at a very slow rate.
” She explains how there were 1,000 genes on the Y chromosome some 150 million years ago. Today, it only has around 42-45 genes left. After doing the math, she states, “A loss rate of 958/150= 6.
4 genes per million years. At this rate, the last 42 genes would be lost in about 6.5 million years.
” Prof Jenny, who was awarded the 2017 Prime Minister’s Prize for Science, explains how the ‘XY’ chromosome was once an ordinary pair that had little to do with sex. As per her research, in other vertebrates (birds, reptiles and fishes) XY still continues to simply serve as an ‘ordinary’ c.
