Seems that those who think mankind is doomed are exactly correct. | INFJ Forum

Seems that those who think mankind is doomed are exactly correct.

Eventhorizon

Eventhorizon

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Interesting. I'd like to know how this "weakening of the y chromosome" happens and what it entails. Considering however, that some scientists have created life purely from female eggs (mice, with very low success rates, but still...), maybe that alone wouldn't doom humanity. The rest does look pretty grim though.

http://www.damninteresting.com/two-eggs-hold-the-sperm/
 
We will all live, and we will all die. If you die before the apocalypse, be grateful.
 
[MENTION=10166]DonTaushMe[/MENTION] Very wise statement. If I die before having to see anyone else I care die again I will consider myself lucky or dead or both or not at all not having a brain with which to consider anything at all.... but my mind is doing its thing again.

It is not death I fear, it is the lead up to it. There are things worse than death, I know this from personal experience. I find an interesting paradox in myself. I care about where humanity ends up knowing I will never get to know...
 
This concept of "weakening of the Y chromosome" is nothing to worry about.

.....
Such is the case for a team of Whitehead Institute scientists, whose latest research on the evolution of the human Y chromosome confirms that the Y -- despite arguments to the contrary -- has a long, healthy future ahead of it.

Proponents of the so-called rotting Y theory have been predicting the eventual extinction of the Y chromosome since it was first discovered that the Y has lost hundreds of genes over the past 300 million years. The rotting Y theorists have assumed this trend is ongoing, concluding that inevitably, the Y will one day be utterly devoid of its genetic content.

.....

Well, the sequence of the rhesus Y (***a monkey that broke off of the human genetic line about 25 million years ago according to this article***), which was completed with the help of collaborators at the sequencing centers at Washington University School of Medicine and Baylor College of Medicine, shows the chromosome hasn't lost a single ancestral gene in the past 25 million years. By comparison, the human Y has lost just one ancestral gene in that period, and that loss occurred in a segment that comprises just 3% of the entire chromosome. The finding allows researchers to describe the Y's evolution as one marked by periods of swift decay followed by strict conservation.

"We've been carefully developing this clearcut way of demystifying the evolution of the Y chromosome," says Page lab researcher Jennifer Hughes, whose earlier work comparing the human and chimpanzee Ys revealed a stable human Y for at least six million years. "Now our empirical data fly in the face of the other theories out there. With no loss of genes on the rhesus Y and one gene lost on the human Y, it's clear the Y isn't going anywhere."

"This paper simply destroys the idea of the disappearing Y chromosome," adds Page. "I challenge anyone to argue when confronted with this data."

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Charles A. King Trust.



http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120222154359.htm
 
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