Sometimes I do think Laura likes to mess with my head. She sent me a story about ‘X-Men’… or I should be more accurate and say ‘XX-Men.’
So, just when I think I have finally gotten ‘my arms around’ some of the complexities and contradictions of our limited understandnig of genetics… she throws me — excuse the pun — this ‘curve ball’:
A genetic switch that produces testes has been found. — Kerri Smith
Confused? Well, here are a couple of exerpts that may make things perfectly… ah… understandable:
“This female-to-male sex reversal almost always happens when a certain gene called SRY, usually carried on the Y chromosome, accidentally ends up on the X chromosome inherited from the father.”
However, the following statement begs more questions than it answers:
“But in most cases of anatomically complete XX men — who have functional testes, but without a Y are infertile — SRY is involved”
Ok, it says ” in most cases”… does that mean that some XX men are ‘fertile’? What do these men look like? Is their immune system more like men or women? By the way, my ‘pregnant fellow at the top of the page has nothing to do with this article other than his appearance is far less surprising to me than the article itself.
It is always amazing to me the tremendous variation in the human condition!
Roger Freberg
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