Somatic cell nuclear transfer is used in cloning, and is said to have promising applications in therapeutic cloning. (I don’t think this has yet been done with people, but it has animals).
So, they remove the nucleus of the donor ova, and insert another being’s DNA instead. Thus far it seems as though that is all that is necessary to create an embryo. If it becomes possible to instead fertilize this ova with altered DNA with a sperm cell instead, is it possible that resultant embryo would be genetically YY? If the DNA inserted into the ova was XY too, I mean.
It seems that the odds of inheriting either parents chromosome is 50-50 for each of the two, so you get an X from mom since she only has a pair of Xs (my problem is that I’m not sure if you can inherit either X from mom, or if only one of the two can be inherited, and the other never is) and you get an Y or an X from dad since he’s got both. If both parents had XY, would the possibilities then be XY, XX and YY? Or is there some sort of biological mechanism that requires that one of the Xs be a gene selected?
And if a person could be YY, would he (I assume it would necessarily become a male individual) be hyper-masculine? Websites claim that boys who are XYY are often bigger and more hyper than their agemates, so it makes me wonder about that, too.
The Y chromsome is deficient in certain genes. That’s why males are more likely to get certain genetic disorders like hemophilia which is caused by a defective or missing gene controlling clotting. The Y doesn’t have the gene and if the X has a bad verision, the male will be sick. A female would only be sick if she had defective genes on both X chromosomes. So at the least, a YY embryo would likely have quite a few genetic defects. I’d venture it would not be viable at all,
but I don’t know.
If that were not so, the inheritance pattern for hemophilia (and other X-linked recessive genetic disorders) would be different. The sons of a carrier mother would either all have hemophilia or all not have hemophilia, and that’s not what happens.
YY individuals are not viable. There are too many genes on the X chromosome that we all need. You occasionally see this sort of thing already, due to random events during meiosies - XXX, XXY, XYY, that sort of thing. Similar events could theoretically produce a YY fetus, but they’ve never been seen. I believe YY abortuses have been found, but I’m not positive about that.
As I understand it, the Y chromsome has almost no functional genes; just the switch that says “Male !”. The X chromosome contains some vital genes, including some involved in blood clotting. At best, a YY child would be very sick; my guess would be that it would by nonviable.
Well now that’s just silly. If there were no functional genes, men would have no genetic inheritance from their fathers, aside from being male. So there would be no need for the distinction of dominant/recessive genes in males.
YY zygotes wouldn’t form in nature; the two chance events which would have to occur are altogether too improbable. It’s more clear if you designate this cell as OYY, where you can see that the cell not only recieved two copies of a Y chromosome, which is highly unlikely, but also had to not recieve any copies of the X chromosome, which is similarly highly unlikely. Rough estimation would put the chances of both events occurring in the same zygote at about 1 in 1 trillion.
We could create such a cell through artificial means. It wouldn’t be terribly difficult, but no one’s going to try. This cell wouldn’t be viable, for reasons already discussed by **Oldguy **and others.
Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. All children recieve 23 chromosomes from each parent, of which one is a Y in the specific situation of a father and son. All conventional rules still apply. A little knowledge can be a very bad thing.
No; the genes are on different chromosomes, that’s all. You see, the Y and X chromosomes are in constant competition; the Y chromosome has been minimized because it is outnumbered, and has no influence in females. By reducing itself to a switch, it ensures that almost all male genes are on chromosomes th X genes can’t sacrifice.
I seem to recall reading in my college Biology 1102 textbook that an X-chromosome is necessary for human survival, even in the womb. Unfortunately, I do not have the book here to do a true cite. As X-linked disorders include Duchenne muscular dystrophy, hemophilia, color blindness, and several forms of mental retardation, it is likely that the proteins coded for by the X-chromosome play a vital role in the formation or function of muscle tissue, blood clotting agents, and eye, muscle, and brain development and function.
It was mentioned earlier but there is a naturally occuring condition called XYY syndrome.. It isn’t horrible and carries few health risk but males with it are a little taller, have somewhat lower IQ’s, and are physically more active than normal.