{"id":235020,"date":"2026-04-11T14:07:50","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T19:07:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/one-dna-letter-can-trigger-complete-sex-reversal"},"modified":"2026-04-11T14:07:50","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T19:07:50","slug":"one-dna-letter-can-trigger-complete-sex-reversal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/one-dna-letter-can-trigger-complete-sex-reversal","title":{"rendered":"One DNA letter can trigger complete sex reversal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/one-dna-letter-can-trigger-complete-sex-reversal.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Researchers at Bar-Ilan University have discovered that changing just one letter in DNA can completely alter sex development in mice. In the new study, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-026-71328-9\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Nature Communications<\/i>, a single-letter insertion in a non-coding regulatory region caused XX mice, which would normally develop as females, to develop instead as males with testis and male genitalia.<\/p>\n<p>The finding is especially striking because the mutation was not made in a gene itself, but in a distant stretch of DNA that helps control a key developmental gene. The study highlights the major role of the <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/news\/2024-03-wiring-human-genome.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\" target=\"_blank\">non-coding genome <\/a>\u2014the 98% of DNA that does not make proteins but helps regulate when and how genes are turned on and off.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a remarkable finding because such a tiny change\u2014just one DNA letter out of approximately 2.8 billion\u2014was enough to produce a dramatic developmental outcome,\u201d said Dr. Nitzan Gonen, from the Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences and Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials at Bar-Ilan University. \u201cIt shows that non-coding DNA can have a profound effect on development and disease.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers at Bar-Ilan University have discovered that changing just one letter in DNA can completely alter sex development in mice. In the new study, published in Nature Communications, a single-letter insertion in a non-coding regulatory region caused XX mice, which would normally develop as females, to develop instead as males with testis and male genitalia. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,412,4,1901],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics","category-nanotechnology","category-sex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}