If you enjoyed my post on the evolution of sex chromosomes in tetrapods, you should check out Darwin Central for even more. It starts with the story of the vole, and goes into how mammalian sex chromosomes have evolved and what we can expect in the future.
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Sex chromosomes are cool. Because they're cool, I've written about them before. It's cool to trace the origins of sex chromosomes. It's cool to study how they evolve.
A few weeks ago PNAS published a paper on the evolution of snake sex chromosomes. The authors compare snake sex chromosome evolution with that of mammals and birds.
Our genes are arrayed along 23 pairs of chromosomes. On rare occasion, a mutation can change their order. If we picture the genes on a chromosome as
A few months ago I wrote the following:
Thanks for the cite! I read your September 8th post and am now heading off to read Current Biology. Genetics is not my area of expertise, but I find it a fascinating topic and have been doing an increasing amount of reading in this area lately.