It has long been assumed that the X chromosome is the
"female" chromosome and the Y "male", but new research is beginning
to challenge that idea. It was theorized that the shutdown of one of the X chromosomes
in females slowed the evolution of the X chromosome and that these genes would
be very similar across most mammals. Through research into this it was
discovered that there are 144 human genes with no counterparts on the mouse and
197 mice genes with no counterpart on the human chromosome. In most cases these
unshared genes, although being present on the "female" chromosome,
are only expressed in males. Although this is relatively new research it would
be interesting to see how this information pertains to human evolution and if
it is in some way related to the "shrinking" Y chromosome.
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