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Research on Sex-Change Mice
The Guardian reported on the change of the sex of some mice.
The removal of some DNA strands cause some previously normal males to grow ovaries and female genitalia. This, some think, may provide some insight into the development of human sexual disorders.
With those DNA strands gone, the mice then became males with female genitalia. The may explain why the XY chromosomes can miss some of the similar strands of DNA for the female mice’s sexual organs or physiology. Men get XY and women get XX.
“Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute in London showed that they could reverse the sex of male mice by deleting a chunk of DNA called enhancer 13, or Enh13 for short.” the reportage explained, “Like 98% of the genome, this section of DNA does not carry any genes that are used to make proteins, the crucial building blocks of living organisms.”
Robin Lovell-Badge, who is a geneticist at the Francis Crick Institute, stated, “For the first time we’ve demonstrated sex reversal after changing a non-coding region of DNA… We think Enh13 is probably relevant to human disorders of sex development and could potentially be used to help diagnose some of these cases.”
The problem with the research into the sexual development disorders comes from the unexplained set of causal pathways from the genes or sets of genes acting in coordinated fashions for various sexual development disorders to emerge.
Lovell-Badge stated, “The analysis of such patients has mostly focused on the parts of genes that encode proteins, ignoring the parts that control the activity of the gene.”
In examination of the mammalian embryos, there are ones destined to grow ovaries and other with tests. The former point to females. The latter to males, on a biological and not sociological analysis — though these do not separate from one another.
“In the earliest stages of development, levels of SOX9 are driven by a gene on the Y chromosome, explaining why males typically develop testes,” the article stated.
Enh13 in the genome is coordinated to boost boosts SOX9 to produce testes at the correct time in development. If these are clipped off the genome, then the male mice become for biological and sexual organ purposes female.
