Men face mass extinction because male genes are dying out, according to researchers. What would the world be without men? Some women might think it's a good idea.
But my advice is to love and cherish the men in your life right now because it's probably that the male gender won't be around in generations to come.
"Men are on the road to extinction as their genes shrink and slowly fade away," Professor Jennifer Graves, a genetic expert warned. She is a researcher in human sex chromosomes who says that the male Y chromosome is dying and could one day run out. But don't worry just yet - the change is not due to take place for another five million years.
But all is not lost. She said men may follow the path of the vole (a type of rodent) which still manages to reproduce despite not having the vital genes that make up the Y chromosome.
"You need a Y chromosome to be male," said Prof Jennifer Graves. "Three hundred million years ago the Y chromosome had about 1,400 genes on it, and now it's only got 45 left, so at this rate we're going to run out of genes on the Y chromosome in about five million years.
"The Y chromosome is dying and the big question is what happens then."
The male Y chromosome has a gene (SRY) which switches on the development of testis and pumps out male hormones that determine maleness. In her lecture, entitled "The Decline and Fall of the Y Chromosome and the Future of Men," Prof Graves discussed the disappearance of the Y chromosome and the implications for humans.
She said it was not known what would happen once the Y chromosome disappeared. "Humans can't become asexual like some lizards, because several vital genes must come from the male," she continued. "But the good news is that certain rodent species - the mole voles of Eastern Europe and the country rats of Japan - have no Y chromosome and no SRY gene.
"Yet there are still plenty of healthy male mole voles and country rats running around. Some other gene must have taken over the job and we'd like to know what that gene is."
The scientist said there were several genes which could take over from SRY, adding whichever one did take over is based purely on chance.
"It is even possible that two or more different sex-determination systems based on different genes could arise in different populations," she added.
"These could no longer reproduce with each other, leading to two different species of humans."
It's true, we won't be around in 5 million years to see the results of the disappearance of the Y chromosome. But it still gives us pause to stop and appreciate males as they exist today. It is difficult to imagine a world without men. A world of only women seems impossible. Let's hope that, another chromosome will take over. That gene hasn't been determined yet.
It's too hard to imagine a world without male genes. One day women may go to museums just to see examples of the extinct male, the way we view dinosaurs today.
Comments
Nothin' a little bit of genetic engineering couldn't fix methinks.
That's right ladies, appreciate me now, cause I'm a vanishing breed.
I read that in Japan and China, where having boy babies is desired, girls are becoming scarcer and scarcer. I think that by the time men will become extinct, we will have frozen enough of their sperm to keep the human race going for a long time. But hey, I won't be around anyway, so I'm not worried about it.
Lashana, if you think genetic engineering can bring back men, so be it. But what kind of men? If they are going to be genetically engineered, someone can determine the exact DNA expression they want these new males to have. It could end up with dictators changing the entire population of the world.
Who will open all the jars!??
Humans will eventuallt reproduce entirely by cloning. this is not science fiction blarney, this is what will happen. human civilization will take humans to other planets and the exposure to higher levels of radiation in space and on less habitable worlds will ebventually mutate our genes to the point where we cannot propogate anyway. we will have to clone ourselves. luckily evolution selects equal numbers of males and females anyway so if males go, females as we know them will go too. perhaps humans will become a gnederless species that needs technology itself to survive?
I have read that the technology for a woman to become pregnant using genetic material taken from cells from another woman may already be here, somatic cell division, meaning lesbian couples could get pregnant and only give birth to baby girls as women do not carry any genetic information to make a boy.
If women do end up deciding the world would be better without men, we might be extinct long before five million years!
What if when men became extinct somehow one man was born, he would get so much A**.
That's right. Get it through your heads. You are weak and pathetic. All men should be rounded up and executed, we'll keep about 100,000 of them alive and distributed in labs for each country, they can sit in their labs naked, playing video games, and jerking off all day. The sperm will be harvested and kept in banks so the species can procreate. Women will rule the world. Show the patriarch who's the stronger sex. Annihilate all men.
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