Female Supremacy Articles - Page 18

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"The X chromosome was pivotal in early human genetics because we were able to see clearly how mutations cause disease," said David Bentley, head of human genetics at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and an author of the sequence paper. "We know what goes wrong with a high diversity of human diseases associated with the X."

The X chromosome includes the gene that causes Duchenne muscular dystrophy, the largest known gene at 2.2 million base pairs long.

"From studying such genes, we can get remarkable insight into disease processes," said Mark Ross, leader of the Human X Chromosome Project at the Sanger Institute.

The X chromosome also has stories to tell about human evolution -- the new code reveals that the X and Y evolved from a pair of regular chromosomes 300 million years ago -- and even human history.

Queen Victoria was a carrier of hemophilia but did not suffer from the disorder, meaning that she had the gene causing the disease on one of her X chromosomes but not on the other. She passed the gene to her granddaughter Alexandra, and through Alexandra's marriage, to the heir to the last czar of imperial Russia, Alexis. It's been suggested that Alexis' hemophilia led indirectly to the Russian revolution.

And so, too, the genome-sequencing revolution rolls on. Don't expect it to end any time soon.

"One of the findings from the sequencing of the X chromosome is that there are more genes involved in disease than we think," said Bentley.