In a new twist for females, human males might go extinct 5.8 million years from now.
Jennifer Graves, a professor of comparative genomics for the Australian National University, said in an Oct. 1 lecture on the evolution of sex chromosomes in animals and humans that new sex-determining genes could evolve in the next few million years.
“Will the males disappear?” Graves asked a room full of biology students. “No. If humans haven’t gone extinct by then, new sex-determining genes and chromosomes will evolve, perhaps leading to the evolution of new hominid species.”
Graves’ lecture on sex chromosomes kicked off the Frontiers of Science Lecture series hosted by the colleges of Science and Mines and Earth Sciences. The lecture series has been around for 41 years, ever since Peter Gibbs, a physics professor at the time, organized the series to bring researchers from around the world to lecture and share knowledge.
Graves began doing extensive work on sex chromosomes about 44 years ago.
Sex chromosomes are genes that determine the biological sex of offspring. Graves said sex chromosomes have evolved for the past 168 million years. Human females have two X chromosomes, while males have an X and Y chromosome.
Graves explained how with birds, males have two of the same chromosome and females have two different ones.
Studies show that species of animals with the XY chromosomes have deterioration in the Y chromosome. In some species, the Y chromosome has disappeared completely.
However, human males still have a chance. Mole voles have completely lost their Y chromosome over the years, but still retain their difference in gender, Graves said.
Many biology students attended the lecture, but not everyone understood the topics.
“I felt like a lot of it was dry if you don’t know about genetics,” said Chris Ligerman, a sophomore in anthropology.
However, Koushik Ghosh, a chemistry graduate student, said he liked the lecture.
“I enjoy evolution so that’s why I came,” Ghosh said. “The speaker did a good job making it interesting.”
Thien SokJennifer Graves, a comparative genomics professor from the Australian National University, spoke on the evolution of sex-determining genes and chromosomes last week on campus.