Genes in Men and Women Act Differently

U.S. researchers say that thousands of genes behave differently in the same organs of males and females — something never detected to this degree.

We previously had no good understanding of why the sexes vary in their relationship to different diseases, said first author Xia Yang, a postdoctoral fellow in cardiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles. Our study discovered a genetic disparity that may explain why males and females diverge in terms of disease risk, rate and severity.

The findings, published in August issue of Genome Research, sheds light on why men and women may respond differently to the same drug.

The UCLA team examined brain, liver, fat and muscle tissue from mice with the goal of finding genetic clues related to mental illnesses, diabetes, obesity and arteriosclerosis — humans and mice share 99 percent of their genes.

Each gene functioned the same in both sexes, but the scientists found a direct correlation between gender and the amount of gene expressed.

We saw striking and measurable differences in more than half of the genes’ expression patterns between males and females, said Dr. Thomas Drake, study co-investigator and UCLA professor of pathology.