Lifeboat Foundation

“Although the skull has an affinity with an Asian population, among individuals of such ancestry, there are a large number of structural differences, which are circumvented by closing the eyelids.”

Found buried in the fetal position at Toca dos Coqueiros in 1997 in Serra da Capivara National Park, Zuzu lived in modern-day Brazil nearly 9,600 years ago. Zuzu’s face has been wondered about by archeologists for years. Moreover, there were some controversies about Zuzu’s sex. We could finally see Zuzu’s face thanks to a new facial approximation.

Moacir Elias Santos et al.

Continue reading “Scientists reconstruct approximately 9,600-year-old Zuzu’s face” »

UK-based Hex wanted to visit friends in the U.S. but was barred from entering due to her virtual work.

Molecular detective work is zeroing in on the origins of sexual reproduction. The protein tools for cell mergers seem to have long predated sex — so what were they doing?

Cells with XX or XY chromosomes provide researchers with a new tool to study how differences in sex chromosomes can influence health and development.

A sex startup says it’s created a VR-enabled masturbation pod for companies that want to make their employees very uncomfortable, very quickly.

Stripchat, a porn site, announced in a blog post that it’s developed something it’s dubbed a “Wank Pod” to give company employees a place to engage in a little office onanism. The company even installed one in their own workplace, and plans a commercial roll out in the future.

“Each ‘Wank Pod’ is planned to come fully equipped with masturbatory accessories, including a 4K LED screen to watch VR cams boosted by Dreamcam’s technology, an Oculus Quest VR headset, lotion, tissues, and more,” the startup wrote in the announcement.

A “sex peptide” transferred from male to female fruit flies during mating interferes with the female’s biological clock, reducing her chances of mating again.

It will provide a better understanding of how drugs affect men and women differently.

Scientists created male and female cells with the same genetic code from the same person for the first time. This unique set of cells could provide researchers with valuable insights into how sex chromosomes affect various diseases and their role in early development.

CDC/Dr. Laine.

Continue reading “In a first, scientists produced male and female cells from a single person” »

What alternative sex-determining system will we adapt?

The sex of human and other mammal babies is decided by a male-determining gene on the Y chromosome. But the human Y chromosome is degenerating and may disappear in a few million years, leading to our extinction unless we evolve a new sex gene.

A new paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science shows how the spiny rat has evolved a new male-determining gene.

Continue reading “Men are losing their Y chromosome, and rats could show our future” »

Mammalian sex chromosomes are highly conserved, and sex is determined by SRY on the Y chromosome. Two exceptional rodent groups in which some species lack a Y chromosome and Sry offer insights into how novel sex genes can arise and replace Sry, leading to sex chromosome turnover. However, intensive study over three decades has failed to reveal the identity of novel sex genes in either of these lineages. We here report our discovery of a male-specific duplication of an enhancer of Sox9 in the Amami spiny rat Tokudaia osimensis, in which males and females have only a single X chromosome (XO/XO) and the Y chromosome and Sry are completely lost. We performed a comprehensive survey to detect sex-specific genomic regions in the spiny rat. Sex-related genomic differences were limited to a male-specific duplication of a 17-kb unit located 430 kb upstream of Sox9 on an autosome. Hi-C analysis using male spiny rat cells showed the duplicated region has potential chromatin interaction with Sox9. The duplicated unit harbored a 1,262-bp element homologous to mouse enhancer 14 (Enh14), a candidate Sox9 enhancer that is functionally redundant in mice. Transgenic reporter mice showed that the spiny rat Enh14 can function as an embryonic testis enhancer in mice. Embryonic gonads of XX mice in which Enh14 was replaced by the duplicated spiny rat Enh14 showed increased Sox9 expression and decreased Foxl2 expression. We propose that male-specific duplication of this Sox9 enhancer substituted for Sry function, defining a novel Y chromosome in the spiny rat.