Talk:Y chromosome

Expression of Y-linked Genes
The article states that *all* Y linked genes are expressed. That seems untrue because only 71 of the Y-chromosome genes have protein-coding potential. Also the total number of genes in the Y-chromosome is 568. Both of these can be found here (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5643963/) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 103.75.161.238 (talk) 14:30, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

This
This article could use a cleanup

"Y is the sex-determining chromosome in many species, since it is the presence or absence of Y that determines male or female sex" Should be changed to something that emphasizes that the presence of Y chromosome determines male sex. The absence of Y chromosome determines female sex.

Things that should go in the Y chromosome article: --nixie 23:26, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Development of understanding y-linked traits (1950s), list of Y linked traits, other disordered arising from multiple Y chromosomes
 * Y chromosome as a degenerate X chromosome (1960s)
 * SRY, sex determining gene
 * mapping and sequencing the Y chromosome, number of genes on Y
 * Most of the Y chromosome doesn't recombine, 95% of the Y chromosome is in the non-recombining region (male specific region) vs pseudoautosomal regions where crossing occurs. Implications for Y chromosome degeneration - losing the Y chromosome (see Prof. Jenny Graves, Bryan Sykes (ick)), evidence that the Y chromosome is not going to be lost
 * Use of the Y chromosome in following the parental line through generations, the Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemings research is a good case study
 * The disputed ear hair gene that is located on the chromosome. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.238.142.12 (talk) 23:17, 6 July 2008 (UTC)


 * "This article could use a cleanup" of what? To include a large number of assertions that have been proven wrong since their introduction?

The sentence:

"The chromosome may be used to trace sexes have unpaired X chromosomess; in the other, both females and males have XX."

in the opening paragraph does not seem to make sense, unfortunately I don't know enough about the topic to be able to change it. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable could make this sentence more clear.

I added link to Wiki's "Y linkage" article at ppg1 Mydogtrouble (talk) 00:10, 26 March 2014 (UTC)


 * There are plenty of sentences that make no sense; some passages seem barely even to be in English. Usually I'd just copyedit rather than grumbling but with respect to some of the errors here I can't even tell what the author meant to say. You're definitely right that it needs cleanup, ideally by someone very familiar with the subject who is also a native English speaker. atakdoug (talk) 23:09, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Unpaired chromosome
From reading the article, it says that the Y chromosome is the only unpaired chromosome and thus can't repair normally. This makes sense, but what about the unpaired X chromosome in males? Wouldn't that suffer from being unable to recombine too? Scott Ritchie 07:31, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes...if the X could never find another X. But every time a male sires a daughter (roughly half the time) he provides his X chromosome with a partner X to practice normal recombination like other autosomes. Since no woman can pass on a Y chromosome to viable offspring, the Y chromosome never meets a similar match. It becomes the loneliest chromosome. --ScottieB (talk) 01:44, 21 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I was looking on the page for a discussion of non-recombinant Y chromosome, and the small portion of recombinant Y. This dicussion appears to be missing from the page, part of the Y chromosome is homologous with X and some recombination does occur. This is tangential to the quesiton you ask, but X and Y do pair prior to meiosis by these homologous region and allows the two to segregate properly. This discussion in this page is lacking.PB666 yap 19:24, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

The article uses the term "heterozygous" under Shrinkage (" a similar loss of function in their heterozygous sex chromosome". The correct term is "hemizygous", (see article on Zygosity) or possibly just rewrite the sentence to talk about "heterogametic sex". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.104.8.8 (talk) 14:07, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Flawed and doomed?
I ran across an article in the New York Times, here's the link http://plaza.snu.ac.kr/~premed/The%20New%20York%20Times%20%20Science%20%20A%20Conversation%20With%20Bryan%20Sykes%20Is%20Genghis%20Khan%20an%20Ancestor%20Mr_%20DNA%20Knows.htm

Dr. Bryan Sykes, a human genetics professor at Oxford University, says that write the Y chromosome is flawed and doomed, and predicts that it will disappear in 120,000 years. I don't know much about genetics, but maybe some of you can shed some light on this and what other genetics professors think of Sykes theory.--Moosh88 22:16, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * There are two new popular science books out this year on Y, his and another (Jones I think). I think Sykes exaggerates a bit for popular literary effect, but I liked his Seven Daughters of Eve (which deserves an article). Someone here should volunteer to read both and synposize them here, don't you think? alteripse 23:13, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I think an article should be written. So do you know if what Sykes says is true?--Moosh88 04:40, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
 * It is speculation. I am sure he has his basic facts right, but his extrapolation into the past is somewhat imaginative and into the future is pretty iffy. alteripse 05:07, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
 * From what I understand, most geneticists agree that the Y chromosome was probably larger in the past, and has shrunk through time. That might deserve mention in this article, although I hesitate to add it without having sources to back it up. I agree that Sykes' prediction that the Y chromosome will disappear entirely is pretty speculative. It's hard for me to imagine what selective pressures would favor a complete loss of the Y chromosome, and I can think of some pretty good reasons its total loss would be selected against. --Geoff 06:41, 16 April 2006 (UTC)



Read the bottom.

That means that many of the genes on the Y chromosome do occur as pairs. Page says members of these pairs appear to be swapping out or recombining with each other -- allowing the genes to repair themselves when they get damaged.

Page says this helps explain why these genes have been able to persist despite millions of years of assault from random mutations. And, he says, it means the Y chromosome won't simply keep shrinking away until it disappears altogether.

--Vehgah 06:28, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Y chromosome gen map
There are 322 genes on Y chromosome.

New content: I found many articles today stating that a new Research conducted in Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts w proves that the Y chromosome might not in fact disappear in another 5 million years as previously thought. I think this ought to be included in the article.  Adi Weerasinghe (talk) 13:01, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

XYY
I recommend deleting the last three sentences about the inaccurate and obsolete "criminal karyotype" concept in the paragraph about 47,XYY in the Chromosome-linked diseases section. I agree that the concept is inaccurate and obsolete and that explaining how the concept arose and was subsequently disproved is important, but I do not think this can be done in three sentences and trying to do so introduces other inaccuracies and should not be part of an encyclopedia article about the Y chromosome. It is inaccurate to generalize:
 * When chromosome surveys were first done in the 1960s, it was reported that a higher than expected number of men in prisons were found to have an extra Y chromosome.

It is incorrect to say:
 * Better population surveys have since demonstrated that the association was simply that boys and men with learning problems are more likely statistically to spend time in prison and that there is no other independent statistical association with extra Y.

In the mid-1960s, large, comprehensive chromosome surveys of British special hospitals for the mentally retarded found a higher than expected number of tall, mentally retarded XYY patients.

After this, several, much smaller, highly selected and biased studies of institutionalized, tall, mentally retarded men and boys in other countries found some with an XYY karyotype--including a very few in prison. The only large, comprehensive, nationwide chromosome survey of institutionalized XYY males was done in Scotland in the mid-1960s and found that XYY men were not overrepresented in prison. Panda411 07:00, 9 July 2006 (UTC)


 * We can certainly change wording to improve accuracy, but I want to be sure I understand your dissatisfaction with the existing paragraph, which I originally wrote. Since there is an entire article on XYY syndrome I was trying to concisely confirm that


 * 1) xyy is indeed the "criminal karyotype" that the reader vaguely remembers hearing about,
 * 2) that the concept is erroneous and the association with criminal behavior false,
 * 3) because it arose from an ascertainment bias in the first decade of kt research, and was probably found because of the somewhat higher rates of mental impairments of all kind in institutionalized males.


 * So I don't understand which of those concepts you disagree with, as your expanded version seems entirely consistent with my brief one. And since I had not even looked at the XYY syndrome article until right now, I note that it entirely lacks a discussion of this issue. If the association were entirely dead and remembered by no one, I would not try to resurrect it, but I regularly run into medical students or others who have some vague memory of hearing about a "criminal karyotype": if we dont acknowledge it, we can't refute it. Should we further shorten it to something like this "Most men with this syndrome have no distinguishing behavioral or body features, but within the group of XYY men there are more with learning problems than in the general population, and men with XYY are taller than average. An association of XYY with criminal behavior originally reported in the 1960s was erroneous." and put your fuller story in the xyy syndrome article? alteripse 12:40, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

I have both general and specific disagreements with the last three sentences of the current XYY paragraph and the proposed shorter alternative sentence: General disagreements about discussing the false "criminal karyotype" concept in this article or the XYY article: Specific disagreements regarding the current last three sentences: Specific disagreement regarding the proposed shorter alternative: "An association of XYY with criminal behavior originally reported in the 1960s was erroneous.":
 * 1) I think the first four sentences of the XYY paragraph that you originally wrote are an excellent summary of the condition and are perfect for this article about the Y chromosome, but I disagree with devoting most of the paragraph to discussing why decades-old misinformation about the condition is wrong. I think both the summary of the XYY condition in this article and the main XYY article should address what it is, not what it is not.
 * 2) The best place for refuting misinformation about XYY would be in a separate article on the History of the XYY Syndrome, but writing such an article consise enough for an encyclopedia would be difficult since there is no good book or article in print or online that does this well.
 * 3) Discussing something that was not and is not true can perpetuate it. For example, using several popular search engines to look up the phrase "criminal karyotype", all but two of the results came from this Wikipedia article. The other two results were: 1) a clinical scenario for a clinical genetics specialist about a patient finding decades-old misinformation on the internet about a "criminal karyotype", and 2) a high school essay by a 10th grade student quoting misinformation about a "criminal karyotype" from a 30-year-old book.
 * 1) The first chromosome surveys in the 1960s found a higher than expected number of tall, mildly mentally retarded XYY patients (not criminals) in the only four British special hospitals (not prisons).
 * 2) Most of the XYY patients had been institutionalized in a system (during its peak years) of mental handicap hospitals that has since been dismantled (there were scandals in the 1960s exposing horrible conditions in some underfunded hospitals). Most of the XYY patients had never committed a crime against a person. Many of the XYY patients were in the special (security) hospitals because they had frequently run away from non-security mental handicap hospitals where they had been institutionalized since childhood.
 * 3) The first and only large and comprehensive survey of prisons was done in Scotland in the 1960s and did not find a higher than expected number of men in prisons to have an extra Y chromosome.
 * 4) There have not since been better population surveys demonstrating that boys and men with an extra Y chromosome are statistically more likely to spend time in prison.
 * 5) Referring to the "criminal karyotype" concept as "inaccurate and obsolete" could be misunderstood to suggest that it is merely outmoded or passé.
 * This is not accurate since large population studies of 12 XYY men in Copenhagen in the 1970s and 17 XYY men in Edinburgh in the 1990s found they had higher lifetime criminal conviction rates (for minor property crimes), but that lower intelligence in the XYY men with convictions accounted for this. XXY and XY men with lower intelligence also have higher criminal conviction rates. Panda411 06:27, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for clarifying and supplying details-- I have no doubt your details are correct. I won't quibble with your wording objections and I don't feel strongly that we need to leave the "criminal karyotype" phrase in this article. Go ahead and change.

However, I do have a substantive disagreement with the bigger issue, which is whether we should even allude to and explain the urban legend about the "criminal karyotype" (call it CK for short) somewhere. So pretend we are having this same discussion on the XYY syndrome page because that is really where it should be. There are two arguments for dealing with it. First, I had heard of this CK business long before wikipedia existed and it has been known to be erroneous since the late 1970s if not sooner. Nevertheless it never dies, and I assume by now it is college and high school teachers who have been propagating it, because I still occasionally run into students or residents who have a vague memory of having heard that sometime long before. Maybe you are right and no one but me is keeping it alive, but I doubt it, which brings us to the second reason I disagree with you. The nature of wikipedia is such that if we remove it, someone will add it to one of the two articles within a year (maybe within a month) thinking they are being helpful and complete. I would rather acknowledge the folklore nature of it and refute it as you did above. The most parallel example I can think of is the ever-recurring rumors about which movie star has androgen insensitivity syndrome: the name changes but the rumor never dies, and I think it best to simply acknowledge it as folklore with a life of its own (and you can see in the article and on the talk page how I handled it). So please write up a brief summary for the XYY syndrome article so you have immunized it against more pernicious versions and we can remove it anywhere else it crops up. If you don't I probably will and you seem to know more details and care more about the exact wording. Thanks. alteripse 19:23, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I am still concerned that an adequate refutation of the criminal karyotype concept would take up a disproportionate portion of the much shorter XYY syndrome article, devoting too much of the article to what the XYY syndrome is not. I think the most appropriate place to refute the criminal karyotype concept would be in a separate article on the History of the XYY syndrome discussing how misconceptions about it arose, leaving the XYY syndrome article to discuss what the XYY syndrome actually is. The short paragraph in the much longer androgen insensitivity syndrome article acknowledging and dismissing recurring false rumors is fine because the paragraph takes up less than 2% of the article text and there is nothing to support the rumors.


 * Although this Wikipedia article's inclusion of the phrase "criminal karyotype" may help keep that specific phraseology alive, I didn't mean to imply that that phrase, or you, or this article was what was keeping the unfair association of XYY with crime alive.


 * The reason you run into medical students and residents who associate XYY with crime is because some leading medical textbooks teach them that. An example of uneven progress:


 * The multi-author, two-volume, 3760-page, $279 hardcover Kaplan & Sadock's Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, 8th ed. (2005) is the first edition in the 38 years since its first edition in 1967 that does not mention XYY.


 * Unfortunately, medical students and residents reading about Genetic Factors--Chromosomal Influences in Chapter 4.4 on Aggression in the lighter and more affordable 1460-page, $89 paperback Kaplan & Sadock's Synopsis of Psychiatry, 9th ed. (2003) are taught that:


 * Early studies indicated persons with the XYY syndrome could be characterized as likely to be apprehended and in prison for engaging in criminal behavior. Subsequent studies indicated that the XYY syndrome contributes to aggressive behavior in only a small percentage of cases. A famous case of an XYY insanity defense is illustrated in Figure 4.4-1.


 * Figure 4.4-1 is a large photo of a man who forty years ago this week committed one of the worst mass murders in American history. The caption gives his name, then explains that:


 * He was convicted in 1966 of slaying eight nurses in Chicago by stabbing and strangulation. His legal defense was based on his genetic makeup, which was XYY. Individuals with these genes have been reported to be tall, mentally retarded, have acne, and show aggressive behavior.


 * His legal defense was in fact not based on his genetic makeup which was never mentioned at any time during his trial or appeals. His karyotype was found to be 46,XY on two separate occasions (in 1966 before his pre-trial competency hearing and again in 1968 before his state appeal) by Dr. Eric Engel, a Swiss endocrinologist and geneticist then at Vanderbilt University studying sex chromosome abnormalities at whose request the studies were done confidentially for research. Detailed results were made public by the man's public defender at a news conference the day after he lost his state appeal in 1968. Dr. Engel published a photograph of the man's normal 46,XY karyotype in a scientific journal article in 1972. Mental retardation, acne, and aggressive behavior are not characteristic of XXY individuals.


 * The photo and caption first appeared in the Forensic Psychiatry chapter of the first edition of Kaplan & Sadock's Synopsis of Psychiatry in 1972 where it was merely one of five photos illustrating "a variety of cases in which mental illness was a legal issue." The photo and caption then disappeared for 31 years and 7 editions before returning to illustrate the 9th edition's chapter on Aggression in 2003. Panda411

Clearly you know more about the history of this than I do and your details are fascinating. I remember being told in medical school about 100 miles from Chicago in about 1973 that Richard Speck had an XYY kt but I don't even remember the context of the talk (psychiatry or genetics or something else). I have no reason to disbelieve your story that it had been refuted in a medical journal in 1972-- clearly the lecturer was not up to date or I remembered exactly the wrong version of the story. It seems to be very hard for teachers to relinquish a vividly illustrative story even when it turns out to be false. I am quite surprised to hear that any medical texts were still purveying the CK story after the 1980s because even we non-geneticists knew it was false by then. Go ahead and put all this into a separate history article then, but the XYY syndrome article will need a link and a sentence saying the CK story is false. I have a bit of sympathy with your desire to simply ignore it but too much experience at wikipedia to think some version won't be put back in within weeks or months. alteripse 11:47, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Origins and Evolution section
The following sentence appears to make no sense: "However, recombination between the X and Y chromosome was harmful because it provided males without needed male genes or females with unneeded male genes." --Xyzzyplugh 18:10, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

It seems meaningless to me also. Anyone have any idea what was intended? alteripse 19:46, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Under Human Y chromosome, I see the reference to '78 genes' (ref is not cited) while earlier under 'origins' I saw reference to '86 working genes' in the human Y chromosome (this does cite a reference). One of these must be wrong.


 * Indeed. In fact, the X chromosome article says:


 * The X chromosome contains about 2000[2] genes compared to the Y chromosome containing 78[3] genes, out of the estimated 20,000 to 25,000 total genes in the human genome. Giridhar (talk) 08:43, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I have a concern about the Shrinking segment, specifically the first paragraph. I understand how a harmful mutation could not be removed via recombination, but wouldn't that make its bearer less likely to survive and/or reproduce, thus lowering the mutation's frequency in the population? This is the normal case for most deleterious mutations: those that receive are doomed to fail to pass them on. It seems unlikely a species would merely endure until a fortunate coding change or massive deletion wiped out the mutation. I am not an expert, so I am asking for either clarification of the theory or an appropriate reference.--ScottieB (talk) 01:50, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

How does this effect Y chromosome evolution?
This was written in the development of Y chromosome - Gene conversion section:

''This recombination phenomenon RecLOH is also observed in Genetic Genealogy when multicopy Y-STR markers located at adjacent palindromic arms change from different repeat counts to twin alleles of equal length. Often 2, 3 or more Y-STR markers are involved in the same recombinational event and change to twin alleles at once.''

How does this affect the development of the chromosome? That's what the section tries to explain, and is not a dump of trivia. So what makes this not a trivia in this case? Mikael Häggström 17:32, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

0.38%: Length of Y chromosome as a pecentage
In humans, the Y chromosome spans 58 million base pairs (the building blocks of DNA) and represents approximately 0.38% of the total DNA in a human cell. How is this number calculated? --Max Shakhray (talk) 15:15, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
 * According to another article, there are 3,080 million base pairs in a male's genome. Thus Y-chromosome contains approx. 1.88% of the genome. How was the 0.38% calculated? --Max Shakhray (talk) 22:32, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

According to http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/chromosome=Y the number should be almost 2%. I've not been able to verify the 0.38% figure so have edited the article. 76.218.82.48 (talk) 03:17, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Is this coding only or including junk DNA? --JWB (talk) 05:50, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I think the 2% is still a problem in the way it is presented. If we are measuring the Y-chromosome as a percentage of the length of the reference sequence then this is correct. But if it is "of the total DNA" then it is wrong since there are two copies of all autosomal chromosomes and only 1 copy of the Y-chromosome. Thus the figure is 59 million / 6 billion. I think either the figure should be changed to 1% or the wording of the article should be changed to something like "approximately 2% of the length of the reference genome" Shaze (talk) 10:57, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

Recent article
I just ran into this : http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/science/14gene.html?hp and thought I'd see what Wikipedia had to say. I see little of this nature on the page, and seeing as Nature (in this case the journal) is a good source, thought a sentence or two might outline the apparently rapid evolution of the Y chromosome. Yes? Eccomi (talk) 01:14, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

XX male syndrome and homosexuality?
The "XX male syndrome" includes the following sentence:

"Thus, leading your child to having a higher chance in being homosexual. While possible, this does not appear plausible in any sense."

This sentence deserves at least a "citation needed", if not complete removal. The awkward sentence structure leads me to believe it's likely to be a troll edit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.70.54.238 (talk) 11:04, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

There's certainly no 'awkward' sentence structure you claim to exist. It does however come across as a 'joke', almost at the level that the SRY gene always leads to a male gender. Considering the existence of intersexed conditions, which are part of the reason why some people transition gender.

Future Evolution
The "future evolution" section seems speculative and largely contradicts the much more credibly written "shrinking theory" section. I'm not an expert, but it seems like it would be good for someone who is to rewrite this to reflect the science cited earlier in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 23.24.213.205 (talk) 00:07, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

False allegations

 * The idea that the Y chromosome was named after its similarity to the letter "Y" is mistaken. All chromosomes normally appear as an amorphous blob under the microscope and only take on a well-defined shape during mitosis. This shape is vaguely X-shaped for all chromosomes. It is entirely coincidental that the Y chromosome, during mitosis, has two very short branches which can look merged under the microscope and appear as the descender of a Y-shape.

What kind of bullshit is this? They already had microscopes back in 18. century. Please remove such false allegations by crooks who just want to get into newspapers: The source isn't reliable. --178.197.228.54 (talk) 15:40, 15 October 2013 (UTC)


 * The passage does not say anything about not having microscopes. It implies just the opposite.  The reliability of sources is not judged by whether or not you happen to agree or disagree with them.  The source for this passage is a book published by Harvard University Press, it was written by David Bainbridge, a scientist notable enough to have an article here, and it won the American Association of Medical Writers' Prize.  If you have sources superior to that then let's hear about them, but see if you can do it a little more politely.  Spinning  Spark  17:40, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Number of genes in the human Y chromosome
While under the heading "Degeneration", it is mentioned that "By one estimate, the human Y chromosome has lost 1,393 of its 1,438 original genes over the course of its existence.." (leading to a current count of 45 active genes), a little while later, under the heading "Human Y Chromosome", the following appears: "The human Y chromosome contains over 200 genes, at least 72 of which code for proteins."

This seems to be a contradiction. 78.166.205.29 (talk) 06:32, 13 March 2017 (UTC) Murat Kayi

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Shrinking
(My original research, not in article.) The literature says that there has been one gene lost, from the human Y chromosome, in 25 million years. There have been, at least, these species since the split from the rhesus macaque: Hominidae, Homininae, Hominini, Ardipithecus ramidus, Australopithecus anamensis, Australopithecus afarensis, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo rhodesiensis, and Homo sapiens. There may well be more. Our species may not descend from any of these, but they are the only ones we have found so far. This means that 9 species have existed and gone extinct, while only one gene has been lost, therefore, including Homo sapiens, 10 species have lost one Y chromosome gene during that time, meaning it is certain that 9 species did not lose any Y chromosome genes.

Continuing at this rate of loss, it will take 1,125,000,000 years for all human Y chromosome genes to be lost.

Thus for all practical purposes the human Y chromosome is no longer losing genes. Nick Beeson (talk) 14:29, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Nick Beeson, I reverted this. Why are you making that edit based on your own original research?


 * I think that, via Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Molecular Biology/Genetics and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Molecular Biology/Molecular and Cell Biology, we should get more opinions on this.


 * No need to ping me if you reply. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 02:14, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Move page to "Human Y Chromosome"
This page (as shown in the figure on the right) is specifically about the Human Y chromosome, evolved from a primordial mammalian Y chromosomes. There are plenty of examples of other Y chromosomes in nature (both plants and animals) and they don't all have the same features (or genes) of the human Y chromosome. Please, as a first step, could this article be renamed/moved to reflect this? Apologies, I have not edited anything on WP for years and don't seem to have access/ability to rename the page. Further proposed edits:
 * link to other pages on XY sex determination systems.
 * distinguish features and mechanisms common to all Y chromosomes (lack of recombination, degeneration of content, male only inheritance) from the specific content of the human/mammalian Y chromosome (e.g. repeat content, SRY) — Preceding unsigned comment added by GinReaper (talk • contribs)
 * The article is not only about the human Y chromosome. What picture is used to illustrate it doesn't matter. Crossroads -talk- 04:14, 10 April 2021 (UTC)


 * All of the entries in the table with the exception of "type" are specific to the human Y chromosome. This table and image composition seems to be copied (provided?) as per individual pages concerning other numbered human chromosomes e.g. Chromosome_21 . I also think that page should be named "Human Chromosome 21"


 * The first paragraph of this current page (above the table of contents), is written from the perspective of the human Y chromosome. The presence of SRY is not common to all Y chromosomes in nature. It is not known outside therian mammals.


 * "The DNA in the human Y chromosome is composed of about 59 million base pairs.[5] The Y chromosome is passed only from father to son. With a 30% difference between humans and chimpanzees, the Y chromosome is one of the fastest-evolving parts of the human genome.[6] The human Y chromosome carries an estimated 100-200 genes, with between 45 and 73 of these protein-coding."


 * The long section Y_chromosome is written exclusively about mammalian Y chromosomes and with the seeming intent to inform us about the past and potential future evolution of the human Y chromosome.


 * The sentence: "With a 30% difference between humans and chimpanzees, the Y chromosome is one of the fastest-evolving parts of the human genome." has a reference to a New York Times article, referencing a Nature publication. This is wildly speculative for an opening paragraph. All the research really found was a 30% difference between chimpanzee Y chromosome sequencing and human sequencing. There is no proven evolutionary direct link between chimpanzees and humans. Therefore what this states as fact is guesswork speculation.


 * The section Y_chromosome suggests that Y chromosomes (and by extension XY systems) outside therians are of the ZW or some other form whereas many taxa have analagous (but not homologous) XY systems - notably flies, including Drosophila. Here is a good ref: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001899  GinReaper (talk) 19:46, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

If my memory serves I was responsible for introducing the therian distinction to disambig from the other happens-to-be-XY systems. I am for the move from "chromosome n" to "human chromosome n" in general, although I am not sure how such a move discussion will work. For this article specifically, moving to human and relegating things to "other" would hopefully clean up the structure a bit, but we do need to think about how do go about that. --Artoria2e5 🌉 06:30, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

That poor data
Poor data and personal input such as "This discovery requires a revision of the theory of Y chromosome generation." has been added to this article by EvgFakka. If no one raises their hand to fix it, I will do so. For now, I put it here for review. GBFEE (talk) 19:31, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree, this area is replete with a lot of contradictory data. So far it is known that the development of the female embryo is an active gene-oriented process, and not as in the middle of the 20th century we were told that this development goes by default. The DAX 1 gene is difficult because it is necessary for the development of testes. Yes, it is attributed to an antimusclinic effect, but it depends on the time. The genes Rspo1, WNT4, etc. are responsible for the development of the ovaries. Perhaps you are right here. I will personally delete this certificate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by EvgFakka (talk • contribs) 09:45, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

The only thing that needs to be corrected is to consider some issues. Because the presence of the Y chromosome, as you can see, may not be necessary for the development of the male sex. There are various kinds of oddities when XX individuals, with only the presence of the SRY gene, become men. Or XX individuals in the absence of the SRY gene also undergo a sex change from female to male. There are many theories, ranging from the Z gene, which suppresses the male development of the embryo, to the complex interactions of a whole chain of genes that are necessary for the development of a male or female embryo. — Preceding unsigned comment added by EvgFakka (talk • contribs) 09:49, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I think you've gotten better at communication, EvgFakka, and I appreciate it. Okay, a thing we have to know when we work on Wikipedia pages, EvgFakka, is how to weight and report on recent data. Telling people "Because the presence of the Y chromosome may not be necessary for the development of the male sex." is an extraordinary claim because it goes against the standard information in the biological and anatomical literature. This needs to be worked on. You also have to be better about casual phrasings such as "of course". It appears Crossroads watches this page. So maybe he can assist. GBFEE (talk) 20:41, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Better? Perhaps you just decided to discuss the edit at the beginning, and then edit it, thereby showing respect to the editor (in this case, to me). In response to this courtesy, my courtesy followed. In principle, the last time I presented you with exactly this requirement.

Then I realized the haste of conclusions. Then your thesis: "Tell people "Because the presence of the Y chromosome may not be required for the development of the male sex." this is WP: EXTRAORDINARY/extraordinary statement because it contradicts standard information in the biological and anatomical literature". Contradicts? Which one is it? I expressed one of the hypotheses that flashes in scientific circles. The so-called gene - Z.

A little digression into history. Until the 21st century, there was a certain Yost, who in 1947 published his research, claiming that the default gender at conception was female. Now this statement is still found everywhere in the minds of people and little-known science, although, frankly, it no longer corresponds to reality. Further (I provided a link to a tertiary source in 2000), scientists have advanced further by showing that there is no default gender. The embryo at the beginning has a BI-POTENTIAL BASIS. The so-called gonadal ridge develops (the genital ridge, it has several interpretations), and then the development proceeds along the path that the genes will choose. The development of female genital glands and ovaries is an ACTIVE GENE-ORIENTED PROCESS. And the very statement "by default" implied a passive model. The DAX1 gene at that time was only one of the contenders for the role of the second gene in sex differentiation. As you can see, the DAX1 gene probably suppresses SRY expression. This has been observed in XY people with duplication of this gene on the X chromosome. In this case, SRY was unable to suppress two DAX1S, and the girl XY developed according to the phenotype.

Why did they start looking for this particular Z gene? Yes, because geneticists have discovered very strange mutations (so-called disorders of sexual development). XX male, on. One of the theories was that the SRY gene simply moved to the X chromosome and yes, in 60-80% of cases such XX men are SRY positive. But when they began to identify XX males negative for the SRY gene (that is, an individual of the XX male developed without the presence of the SRY sex-determining gene), it became a somewhat fascinating discovery. For that reason, yes. It is still difficult to talk about any sex-determining gene in the womb other than SRY. But, as we can see, the Y chromosome is not a NECESSARY (I mean in 100% of cases) factor of the male embryo. Probably, it would be possible to write about it on this page. The development of the ovaries and the female embryo (the mechanisms that initiate its development) are still poorly understood, but I have already written. Genes such as WNT4, Raspo1 and others are responsible for the development of the female embryo. From the side, SRY itself or through intermediaries can temporarily suppress the same WNT4 so that the boy develops (the SOX9 gene is activated, etc.). DAX1 can temporarily suppress SF1 or SRY so that development proceeds along the female line (in turn activating WNT4, etc.). In general, there is a lot of ground for reflection. EvgFakka (talk) 21:31, 11 December 2021 (UTC)


 * It is mostly not Y chromosome, it is X chromosome deactivation (that causes genome imprinting). So two X means one of them is inactivated, that leads to different genes being activated. 2A00:1370:8184:1765:2439:98C0:6B79:4DCC (talk) 09:38, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Father determines gender of children
This article, in my opinion, needs to state clearly that the father determines the gender of children, because sperm carry either the X or Y chromosome, while eggs can only have X chromosomes (male cells are XY and females are XX). One reason why this fact is important is that it has been estimated that 1/12 of all female babies born in India are killed because it is erroneously believed that females determine the gender of their babies.

I'd like to ask WP editors to indicate below whether they agree with adding a section to state this clearly or not, thanks. There is no point in my adding a section and thus starting an edit war. David Spector (talk) 23:23, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Loss of Y Chromosome paper in Nature
Dan Theodorescu has recently published a paper in Nature (journal) titled "Y chromosome loss in cancer drives growth by evasion of adaptive immunity" [1 ] Should this paper showing the connection between loss of Y Chromosome and cancer be added to the Loss of Y Chromosome section on this article? RKSatWork (talk) 20:49, 29 June 2023 (UTC)


 * This isn't a place to promote people or their recently published papers. We shouldn't be adding anything that doesn't meet WP:MEDRS (and as a primary study, this does not). MrOllie (talk) 20:51, 29 June 2023 (UTC)