Latest X-inactivation Stories

An enzyme that binds differently to male and female sex chromosomes helps males to make up for their X chromosome shortageResearchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, and the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) in Hinxton, UK, have revealed new insights into how sex chromosomes are regulated. A chromatin modifying enzyme helps compensate for the fact that males have only one copy of the sex chromosome X, while females have two. The...

Independent research papers from Dr. Peter Becker (Munich, Germany) and Dr. Mitzi Kuroda (Boston, MA) in the October 1 issue of Genes & Development delineate the mechanism of X-chromosome dosage compensation in Drosophila. In Drosophila, like in humans, male cells have a single X chromosome, while female cells have two. Researchers have long debated over how X and autosomal chromosome gene expression is equalized between the sexes (generally regarding two different models, known as the...

Women get more work out of hundreds of genes on the X chromosome than men do, and that could help explain biological differences between the sexes, a new study says. The results imply that women make higher doses of certain proteins than men do, which could play out in gender differences in both normal life and disease, researchers said. So far, however, none of the genes identified in the study has been linked to any such observable differences, said senior study author Huntington Willard of...