Women have more massive chromosomes (with DNA comprising a lot of that mass)2; this makes them more epigenetically versatile, as the body turns off and on genes to maintain homeostasis and adapt to environmental change.
Barbara McClintock discovered that sections of DNA called transposons migrate to different sites on chromosomes. As we can see from transposon migration's influence on chromophore expression among her botanical subjects, the same genes may have different functions depending on their chromosomal location. In fact, it is the accumulation of mutations over time which results in the taxonomical features of species.
1Sapolsky, Robert. "Molecular Genetics I." Human Behavioral Biologyy. Stanford Courseworks. Stanford University, Stanford, CA. Web. 27 Oct. 2011.
2 Ridley, M. (2006). Genome: the autobiography of a species in 23 chapters. New York: Harper Perennial.
No comments:
Post a Comment