|
|
|
|
A UK researcher has a new explanation for how the human race manages to keep a fairly even balance of males and females, despite massive deaths of young males in war and selective abortion of female fetuses in certain parts of the world.
|
A UK researcher has a new explanation for how the human race manages to keep a fairly even balance of males and females, despite massive deaths of young males in war and selective abortion of female fetuses in certain parts of the world.
Corry Gellatly, a research scientist at Newcastle University, proposes that there's a gene that determines whether a man will father more sons, more daughters, or equal numbers of each. When females are in short supply, they have a better chance of snagging a mate, and are thus more likely to pass the gene for fathering daughters on to their offspring. And when men are scarce, they have a better chance of mating and passing along the gene for having sons.
"It's kind of a counter-balancing mechanism," Gellatly explained. "You can't get a population that becomes too skewed toward males or too skewed toward females."
The ratio of male to female births jumped significantly at the end of each of the world wars in countries involved in the fighting. A number of hypotheses have been floated to explain why. One idea is that returning soldiers have extra-frequent sex with their partners, which could lead to fertilization earlier in the menstrual cycle, possibly making male births more likely.
After sorting through 927 family trees from North America and Europe, including 556,387 people in all, Gellatly proposes another explanation.
In an article published online in the journal Evolutionary Biology, the researcher suggests that men carry a gene that controls their ratio of X to Y sperm, and thus the likelihood of their fathering sons or daughters.
Gellatly made a computer model simulating how the gene would act over 500 generations, and examined whether offspring sex ratios in the real-life family trees supported his hypothesis. Both experiments bore out his idea of a gene for gender.
Almost all of our genes come in pairs, with one being inherited from each parent. Gellatly hypothesizes that the gender-controlling gene comes in a "male" and "female" version, with three possible combinations of the two.
A man could have a "male-male" gene, which would promote the formation of Y sperm; a "male-female" gene, which would cause him to produce about the same number of X and Y sperm; and a "female-female" gene, which would cause him to make more X sperm.
"The structure of the proposed gene is essentially very basic, and its function is simply to say 'produce more boys' or 'produce more girls,'" Gellatly explains.
點(diǎn)擊查看更多雙語新聞
(Agencies)
|
即便是很多年輕男性死于戰(zhàn)場(chǎng)，女嬰在某些地區(qū)被選擇墮胎，人類仍能維持男女性別比例的基本平衡。這是為什么呢？英國(guó)一位研究人員對(duì)此做出了新的解釋。
英國(guó)紐卡斯?fàn)柎髮W(xué)的研究員考利?蓋里特利提出，是某種基因決定了男性后代的性別比例。當(dāng)女性數(shù)量較少時(shí)，她們更容易找到配偶，因此生女孩的基因遺傳給后代的可能性更大。而當(dāng)男性數(shù)量較少時(shí)，他們?cè)趽衽紩r(shí)則處于優(yōu)勢(shì)，所以生男孩基因遺傳給后代的幾率更大。
蓋里特利解釋說：“這是一種平衡機(jī)制。就某一地區(qū)的人口而言，不會(huì)出現(xiàn)某種性別人口過多的現(xiàn)象。”
兩次世界大戰(zhàn)末期，參戰(zhàn)國(guó)都曾出現(xiàn)“男嬰潮”，當(dāng)時(shí)關(guān)于這一現(xiàn)象的種種推理層出不窮。其中一種解釋是回國(guó)士兵與伴侶的性生活更為頻繁，使得女性的受孕期提前，而這有可能提高生男孩的幾率。
蓋里特利在對(duì)北美洲和歐洲927個(gè)族譜的556387人進(jìn)行研究后做出了另一種解釋。
他在發(fā)表于《進(jìn)化生物學(xué)》網(wǎng)絡(luò)版上的研究報(bào)告中指出，男性攜帶的一種基因控制著他們X和Y染色體的比例，從而影響他們后代的男女性別比例。
蓋里特利制作了一個(gè)計(jì)算機(jī)模型來模擬這種基因歷經(jīng)500次遺傳會(huì)如何發(fā)生作用，并調(diào)查現(xiàn)實(shí)生活中家族后代的性別比例是否符合他的假設(shè)。兩項(xiàng)實(shí)驗(yàn)都驗(yàn)證了他有關(guān)基因決定后代性別的觀點(diǎn)。
我們攜帶的幾乎所有基因都是成對(duì)的，分別遺傳自父親和母親。蓋里特利假定，性別控制基因由“m”和“f”組成，它們有三種組合方式。
第一種方式是“mm”：攜帶“mm”基因的男性能產(chǎn)生更多的Y染色體精子；第二種方式是mf，能產(chǎn)生相同數(shù)量的X、Y染色體；第三種是ff，能產(chǎn)生更多的X染色體。
蓋里特利解釋說：“這種基因的結(jié)構(gòu)從本質(zhì)上來說很簡(jiǎn)單，它的功能也很好解釋，那就是‘更容易生男還是女’。”
（實(shí)習(xí)生許雅寧 英語點(diǎn)津姍姍編輯）
|
