Single X chromosome (Turner syndrome)

[Smeghead]

@Alex_Dubinsky

Yeah, people were naive. You have to ask how they could not have anticipated all this? Too eager to have everything “explained”–to have a feeling of understanding?

Well, I think the scientific community got a sense that “junk” was a bad descriptor fairly early on; it was just one of those things that escaped out into the real world and took on a life of its own. But I think it’s natural excitement to say, “Hey, look what I figured out - this explains everything”. I certainly would love to have a moment like that in my career, no matter how naive it turns out to be.

What I strongly suspect is that not only are there fantastically complex codes and processes that control the organizations of tissues as they grow, but that there are equally complex processes that aim to optimize evolution and mutation. Understanding those would be magnificent.

We’re beginning to get some glimpses into processes like that. One area that interests me is the competition between males and females that is going on within the same genome. Some genes that are beneficial to males are horrible for females. F’rinstance, fruit fly semen includes brain-controlling proteins that go to the female brain and try to make her stop mating with other males. The evolution of stuff like that has layers of complexity. Or there is some evidence that chromosomes can compete amongst themselves during female meiosis to get themselves included in the oocyte instead of being discarded in polar bodies - sort of the ultimate expression of the selfish gene idea.

And computer models are getting amazingly powerful - my lab does a lot of that kind of work. Given enough data to work with, it’s now possible to go through a genome base by base and give an estimate of what evolutionary forces have given rise to that particular letter. Amazing stuff.

[Uncertain]

@Smeghead

We’re beginning to get some glimpses into processes like that. One area that interests me is the competition between males and females that is going on within the same genome. Some genes that are beneficial to males are horrible for females. F’rinstance, fruit fly semen includes brain-controlling proteins that go to the female brain and try to make her stop mating with other males.

That’s an interesting topic, but I don’t see how it’s evidence of “processes that aim to optimize evolution and mutation.”

Or there is some evidence that chromosomes can compete amongst themselves during female meiosis to get themselves included in the oocyte instead of being discarded in polar bodies - sort of the ultimate expression of the selfish gene idea.

Segregation distortion, which includes this mechanism, certainly happens. Again, an interesting topic, but I don’t see the connection to “optimizing evolution and mutation”.