Simple gene technique changes sex of a mouse
By Steve Connor,
The Independent
| 12. 11. 2009
From Minnie to Mickey (and all they did was turn off a gene)
The battle of the sexes is a never-ending war waged within ourselves
as male and female elements of our own bodies continually fight each
other for supremacy. This is the astonishing implication of a
pioneering study showing that it is possible to flick a genetic switch
that turns female ovary cells into male testicular tissue.
For
decades, the battle of the sexes has been accepted by biologists as a
real phenomenon with males and females competing against each other -
when their interests do not coincide - for the continued survival of
their genes in the next generation. Now scientists have been able to
show that a gender war is constantly raging between the genes and cells
of one individual.
One of the great dogmas of biology is that
gender is fixed from birth, determined by the inheritance of certain
genes on the X and Y sex chromosomes. But this simplistic idea has been
exploded by the latest study, which demonstrated that fully-developed
adult females can undergo a partial sex change following a genetic
modification to a single gene.
The...
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