Female Supremacy Articles - Page 14

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The analysis also found that the obsessively debated differences between men and women were, at least on the genetic level, even greater than previously thought.

As many as 300 of the genes on the X chromosome may be activated differently among women than among men, said molecular biologist Laura Carrel at Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, the other author of the paper.

"The important question becomes how men and women actually vary and how much variability there is in females," Carrel said. "We now might have new candidate genes that could explain differences between men and women."

All told, men and women may differ by as much as 2% of their entire genetic inheritance, greater than the hereditary gap between humankind and its closest relative — the chimpanzee.

"In essence," Willard said, "there is not one human genome, but two — male and female."

Scientists estimate that there may be as many as 30,000 genes in the chemical DNA blueprint for human growth and development known as the human genome.

The chromosomes that dictate sexual development are mixed and matched in predictable combinations: A female inherits one X chromosome from each parent; a male inherits an X chromosome from his mother and a Y chromosome from his father.

To avoid any toxic effect from double sets of X genes, female cells randomly choose one copy of the X chromosome and silence it — or so scientists had believed.