A Gene Mystery Summary

The scientific article that will be explored regarding the hypothesis and the findings is “A Gene Mystery: How Are Rats with No Y Chromosome Born Male?” By Steph Yin. This article was published by the New York Time on May 12, 2017. The main topic of this article is the endangered Amami spiny rats which are found in Japan. These rats are the focus of the experiment because these rats have lost their “Y chromosome and as well have lost the gene SRY (which is considered the master switch of male anatomical development in most mammals) (Yin, 2017)”. This is something very interesting because rats just like humans need to have both the X and Y chromosome to become a male, but apparently, it appears the rats only carry the X and somehow their bodies …show more content…
Therefore, the scientist injected the stem cell into mice embryos and transplanted the embryos into female mice, which birthed around 13 chimeras. Later, scientist discovered that the iPS they implanted into the chimeras was in the ovary as immature egg cells, and in others in the testis as immature sperm cells (Yin, 2017).” According to the scientist Diana Laird “this study shows that the spiny rat’s sex cells have astounding fluidity, the cells were able to sense whether they were in an ovary or testis (Yin, 2017).” Although the chromosome Y is missing in these animals, it appears their bodies have adjusted to the missing chromosome and have found a quick fix to the problem. Although their bodies have found a solution the scientist see that the solution isn’t the best one because their ovaries and testis aren’t fully developed thus causing them to be undeveloped for their age and maybe causing them to