Post: #1

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/34843925/#.UV5vXVeAYtM


Men more evolved? Their Y chromosome is

Genes that make a man are evolving far faster than rest of human code

Women may think of men as primitive, but new research indicates that the Y chromosome — the thing that makes a man male — is evolving far faster than the rest of the human genetic code.

A new study comparing the Y chromosomes from humans and chimpanzees, our nearest living relatives, show that they are about 30 percent different. That is far greater than the 2 percent difference between the rest of the human genetic code and that of the chimp's, according to a study appearing online Wednesday in the journal Nature.

These changes occurred in the last 6 million years or so, relatively recently when it comes to evolution.

"The Y chromosome appears to be the most rapidly evolving of the human chromosomes," said study co-author Dr. David Page, director of the prestigious Whitehead Institute in Cambridge and a professor of biology at MIT. "It's an almost ongoing churning of gene reconstruction. It's like a house that's constantly being rebuilt."

Before men get too impressed with themselves, lead author Jennifer Hughes offers some words of caution: Just because the Y chromosome, which determines gender, is evolving at a speedy rate it doesn't necessarily mean men themselves are more evolved.

Researchers took the most detailed examination of the Y chromosome, which females do not have, of both humans and chimps and found entire sections dramatically different. There were even entire genes on the human Y chromosome that weren't on the chimp, said Hughes, also of the Whitehead Institute.

The two-year research took twice as long as expected because of the evolutionary changes found, Hughes said.

There is a bit of a proviso to the comparison to other chromosomes. While all human and chimp chromosomes have been mapped, only two chimp chromosomes have been examined in great detail: Y and chromosome 21. Yet, there's still enough known to make the claim that the Y is the speediest evolver, Hughes and Page said.

Finally, some respect
Until recently the Y chromosome was considered the Rodney Dangerfield of genetics, especially because it had fewer genes than other chromosomes. A few years ago some researchers even suggested that the Y chromosome was shrinking so that in 50,000 years it would just disappear — and so would men.

"The story is not as cut and dried as many would have liked to predict," Hughes said. "It's kind of fun to say that men are going to die out, but the science is proving — now that we've got data — that that's not true at all."
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Page agreed. "The Y chromosome has many more tricks up its sleeve than it was given credit for," he said.

There are a couple of reasons Page and Hughes cite for Y being such an evolutionary powerhouse. One is that it stands alone and isn't part of a pair like 44 other chromosomes. So when there are mutations there's no matching chromosome to recombine and essentially cover up the change, Hughes said. Because women have two X chromosomes, the X chromosome doesn't have this situation.

Another reason has to do with the nature of mating. When female chimps are in heat, they mate frequently and with many partners, so there is an evolutionary pressure on the male to produce the most and best sperm to propagate his genes, Page said.

To test this out, Hughes said she hopes to soon examine the Y chromosomes of a rhesus macaque, which is fairly promiscuous, and the marmoset, which is more monogamous than early humans probably were.

Outside scientists praised the study.

"Wow," said R. Scott Hawley, a genetics researcher at the Stowers Institute in Kansas City. "That result is astounding."

"The Y chromosome clearly has the strength and tenacity to fight back," said Hawley, who wasn't part of the research. "I certainly think the Y chromosome has taken a bad rap for a long time with people doing maps showing areas for channel surfing."

Post: #2

Haha, ten bucks says it never makes my facebook live feed like all the "men are dying out" articles from the armchair feminists I never seem to block.

Post: #3

Quote:lead author Jennifer Hughes offers some words of caution: Just because the Y chromosome, which determines gender, is evolving at a speedy rate it doesn't necessarily mean men themselves are more evolved

ummm..

Quote:Y chromosomes from humans and chimpanzees, our nearest living relatives, show that they are about 30 percent different. That is far greater than the 2 percent difference between the rest of the human genetic code

What it says is that the Y chromosone is differentiated more than any other chromosone to our closest primate (and less evolved) relation.

Female humans are closer to female chimps than male humans are to male chimps.

Post: #4

Well, that certainly doesn't mean that men are "better" or "worse", just that they evolve faster. In other words, they respond to evolutionary pressures about 15 times quicker than women.

In other words, if women keep mating only with jerks, men will become jerks at a rate 15 times greater than anyone expects.

Makes perfect biological sense.

Post: #5

Female response to this: "Women are still more evolved because they have Barr's body ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barr_body )". Not being a biologist, not sure what to make of it.

Post: #6

I have believed for a long time that the purpose of evolution is to create a perfect male. A perfect male is an organism that has reduced its biological feminine imperative to a minimum and has developed a new imperative that transfers evolution from biosphere into neosphere.

Evolution is carried out by males. Females fallow along. The most primitive organisms are unisex (females) and are preoccupied with reproduction. In sophisticated organisms females are still preoccupied with reproduction and even human females vote and buy milk based on hypergamy. A male is an organism liberated from this and increasingly free turn his attention to subjects above biology. Homo sapiens was a breakthrough in this and modern manosphere cracking the feminine nature and bringing it out to light, refusing to serve it blindly is another evolutionary step. Seriously in future it will change us as species.

Post: #7

Once you understand basic human genetics, this result is intuitive. With only one Y chromosome every expressed gene on the Y chromosome is a phenotype. All other chromosomes have two copies, so bad a gene on one may be "hidden" by a good gene on the other.

Post: #8

Plus the historical breeding ratio for females to male is greater than 1 for major human population groups.

Fewer males than females get to pass on their genes. Polygyny, hypergamy, and all that jazz. Thus, Y-Chromosome lineages are both disseminated and swept out faster.

Post: #9

as men we burden the weight of variance and selection

Post: #10

First, I'm surprised the media would run any pro-male story, so thanks for posting.

Second, we're trained by school, media, and society to ignore what's right in front of our faces: that the progress we see all around us is male-driven. Whenever there is a new innovation in anything, from cars to the Internet to cell phones to health-care, it's a man doing his job. Ever look out the window? It was all built and designed by men. So the info in this study should come as no surprise. But it does. Why?

Because it tells of something so painfully obvious that people simply don't see it. Progress is, was, and always will be the domain of men. A society that can't admit that out loud is a deeply troubled society.

It's doubly ironic that when men invented all sorts of appliance that made women's work easier (dishwashers, washing machines, etc.) women's response was to invent women's lib and invade the male workspace because of the alleged boredom of suburbia.

If you remove men from the society, you cease to have a society. The fact that boys are not taught this in school is a testament to how screwed up Western civilization has become. Roissy and others have written about men as the "expendable" sex. While that might be true on an individual basis, if you removed men in large numbers (say 1/3 of men) you'd have a chaotic, degenerating stone-age mess on your hands within five years. Who would maintain the infrastructure? Who would come up with the new cure for the new disease? Who would figure out a way to rebuild after the natural disasters?

You can't say the same about women.

(04-05-2013 01:32 AM)megatron Wrote:  http://www.nbcnews.com/id/34843925/#.UV5vXVeAYtM


Men more evolved? Their Y chromosome is

Genes that make a man are evolving far faster than rest of human code

Women may think of men as primitive, but new research indicates that the Y chromosome — the thing that makes a man male — is evolving far faster than the rest of the human genetic code.

A new study comparing the Y chromosomes from humans and chimpanzees, our nearest living relatives, show that they are about 30 percent different. That is far greater than the 2 percent difference between the rest of the human genetic code and that of the chimp's, according to a study appearing online Wednesday in the journal Nature.

These changes occurred in the last 6 million years or so, relatively recently when it comes to evolution.

"The Y chromosome appears to be the most rapidly evolving of the human chromosomes," said study co-author Dr. David Page, director of the prestigious Whitehead Institute in Cambridge and a professor of biology at MIT. "It's an almost ongoing churning of gene reconstruction. It's like a house that's constantly being rebuilt."

Before men get too impressed with themselves, lead author Jennifer Hughes offers some words of caution: Just because the Y chromosome, which determines gender, is evolving at a speedy rate it doesn't necessarily mean men themselves are more evolved.

Researchers took the most detailed examination of the Y chromosome, which females do not have, of both humans and chimps and found entire sections dramatically different. There were even entire genes on the human Y chromosome that weren't on the chimp, said Hughes, also of the Whitehead Institute.

The two-year research took twice as long as expected because of the evolutionary changes found, Hughes said.

There is a bit of a proviso to the comparison to other chromosomes. While all human and chimp chromosomes have been mapped, only two chimp chromosomes have been examined in great detail: Y and chromosome 21. Yet, there's still enough known to make the claim that the Y is the speediest evolver, Hughes and Page said.

Finally, some respect
Until recently the Y chromosome was considered the Rodney Dangerfield of genetics, especially because it had fewer genes than other chromosomes. A few years ago some researchers even suggested that the Y chromosome was shrinking so that in 50,000 years it would just disappear — and so would men.

"The story is not as cut and dried as many would have liked to predict," Hughes said. "It's kind of fun to say that men are going to die out, but the science is proving — now that we've got data — that that's not true at all."
Advertise | AdChoices

Page agreed. "The Y chromosome has many more tricks up its sleeve than it was given credit for," he said.

There are a couple of reasons Page and Hughes cite for Y being such an evolutionary powerhouse. One is that it stands alone and isn't part of a pair like 44 other chromosomes. So when there are mutations there's no matching chromosome to recombine and essentially cover up the change, Hughes said. Because women have two X chromosomes, the X chromosome doesn't have this situation.

Another reason has to do with the nature of mating. When female chimps are in heat, they mate frequently and with many partners, so there is an evolutionary pressure on the male to produce the most and best sperm to propagate his genes, Page said.

To test this out, Hughes said she hopes to soon examine the Y chromosomes of a rhesus macaque, which is fairly promiscuous, and the marmoset, which is more monogamous than early humans probably were.

Outside scientists praised the study.

"Wow," said R. Scott Hawley, a genetics researcher at the Stowers Institute in Kansas City. "That result is astounding."

"The Y chromosome clearly has the strength and tenacity to fight back," said Hawley, who wasn't part of the research. "I certainly think the Y chromosome has taken a bad rap for a long time with people doing maps showing areas for channel surfing."

Post: #11

Birds are more evolved than dinosaurs. Wound you rather fuck with a chicken or a velociraptor?

Post: #12

(04-05-2013 12:08 PM)WesternCancer Wrote:  Birds are more evolved than dinosaurs. Wound you rather fuck with a chicken or a velociraptor?

Seriously. Isn't the concept of "more evolved" the most retarded thing you've ever heard?

Post: #13

This is not surprising at all.

Historically, polygamy (and therefore hypergamy) was rampant. Many men did not ever produce children, and that's if they were lucky enough to avoid the fate of living as a eunuch (castrated man). Throughout most of human history, almost all women reproduced, while only half (or less) of men ever reproduced. So it makes sense that mtDNA (DNA we inherit from our moms) and the shared male-female 'X' Chromosome would have more "old" leftover alleles that the environment theoretically would have selected against. Women weren't exposed to the same survival pressures men were.

Post: #14

(04-05-2013 02:23 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

(04-05-2013 12:08 PM)WesternCancer Wrote:  Birds are more evolved than dinosaurs. Wound you rather fuck with a chicken or a velociraptor?

Seriously. Isn't the concept of "more evolved" the most retarded thing you've ever heard?

Yeah. Just a term used by the media to create buzz like this.

Lots of bad info on evolution/genetics here. The main method by which evolution occurs is natural selection. Some traits lead to a higher reproductive success (fitness) than others, some are terrible for the organism in the given environment so they die.

Think of it this way. On earth superman is extremely fit for the environment. He can fly, stop bullets, is super strong and makes the bitches wet. Compare him to some basement-dwelling omega who eats nothing but cheetoes and does 5 WoW raids a day.

Transport those two to another environment and their fitnesses (determined by their genetics) could be polar opposites. Lets say theres kyrptonite everywhere. Superman can't survive as well and dies before he reproduces. The omega isn't affected by the kryptonite + survives to reproduce. Technically in this environment the basement-dwelling omega is more fit and will live to pass on his genes.


Another example would be bacterial resistance. Due to the sheer number of bacteria one is bound to be resistant to a certain antibiotic. You dump antibiotics on and everything dies except for the resistant ones (and maybe a few non-resistant). Resistant bacteria are more fit in this environment so they reproduce faster and in larger numbers than the non-resistant ones. However, take away the antibiotics and the few non-resistant bacteria that survive will reproduce much quicker than the antibiotic resistant bacteria (theres a large "cost" in having antibiotic resistance). After a while the population will be mostly non-resistant bacteria.

Post: #15

This doesn't make sense. How can one gender evolve faster than another in the same species. It takes two to tango.

Post: #16

The second sentence of the article is:

Quote:Women may think of men as primitive...

Would love to say the day when any mainstream article starts out:

Quote:Men may think of women as primitive...