Males 'Rev Up' Genes to Offset Shortcomings
Gentlemen, start your engines. To survive, male fruit flies compensate for their genetic shortcomings by revving up their genes.
Similar revving may happen in humans, and defects in the process might be related to certain neurological disorders.
Genes are carried on threadlike constructions of DNA and proteins called chromosomes. Like humans, male fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) have one X chromosome and one Y, which defines them as male. Meanwhile females have two X chromosomes.
But for males to live, they have to somehow remedy this imbalance. To do so, Erica Larschan of Brown University and her colleagues found fruit flies have a special protein that lets them magnify, or upregulate, their single X chromosome.
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