Scientists have signed a study with the potential to pave the way for great developments in the medical world. For the first time in history, a full-scale map of the Y chromosome, which is found only in males, has been produced. This paved the way for much more detailed information on certain diseases and conditions such as certain types of cancer, human evolution, infertility and even aging.
A healthy individual has a pair of chromosomes, XX and XY. The Y chromosome, which is the determinant of sex, has not been fully mapped until now. This was because the chromosome had a very repetitive and complex sequence. Thanks to the latest studies, this great mystery has been left behind.
Y chromosome repeats all sequences to protect against mutation!
X and Y chromosomes have opposite base sequences. These bases are adenine, cytosine, thymine and guanine. The mutual arrangement of the bases in a certain order also constitutes the genetic code of people. The reason why the Y chromosome has too many repetitions in base sequences has been understood by recent studies. The Y chromosome was forming spare sequences against possible mutations. In addition, some of these repeat sites were used for functions such as sperm production.
Scientists from the NHGRI team working within the US National Institutes of Health, during their studies in which they detected more than 30 million base pairs, determined that almost half of the information encoded on the Y chromosome is exactly the same. Imagine a book full of pages. Half of the paragraphs in this book were written in exactly the same way. This detection led to the complete mapping of the Y chromosome.
It was also understood how the mapped chromosome differs between people.
The scientists who mapped the Y chromosome also examined how these chromosomes differ between different people in a second study. Normally, it was known that 99.9 percent of the DNA of two people is common, and 0.01 percent of it causes difference. Within the scope of the research, the differences between the Y chromosome of an individual known to be of European origin and the Y chromosome of 43 individuals, half of whom are known to be of African origin, were examined.
The results were stunning. The scientists found that there are base pair differences in the Y chromosomes in the range of 45.2 million to 84.9 million units. But how this affects human health could not be understood with the available data. It is also unclear why and when the Y chromosome undergoes such differentiation. As a result, in a pregnancy, the X chromosomes in the mother and father mixed with each other, while the Y chromosomes were inherited directly from the father. So the probability of changes in millions of base pairs was low. It seems that new research will help to shed light on such unknowns.
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