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Women
Are From Venus, Men Are Like Papayas
by Mad Dog
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Another way to
look at it is that if the Y chromosome gets lost on the way to the egg,
you end up with a daughter. Feel free to add the “If they’d stop and
ask directions there would be more baby boys in the world” joke of
your choice here. |
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Scientists in Japan have
created a fatherless mouse by mixing the genes from two female mice and
adding them to an egg. Boy, do I suddenly feel useless. I know I
shouldn’t. After all, just because we’re accustomed to a sperm being
integral to the creation of an offspring doesn’t mean all animals need
it to procreate. Bees, ants, aphids, and even some fish and reptiles
reproduce without having sex, which means the males don’t have much
more to do in life than work, take out the trash, and watch football
while the females have all the fun by themselves. And probably don’t
even let the guys watch. On the plus side, it means they don’t have to
buy the females dinner, remember flowers on their anniversary, or lie by
telling them their butts don’t look big. I mean, what are they going
to do, withhold the sex they never have with them?
The researchers from the Tokyo
University of Agriculture (motto: “Taking the fun out of sex”) who
pulled off this feat say it will be a long time, if ever, until this can
be accomplished with humans. That’s a good thing since if it caught on
it could mean the end of the Y chromosome as we’ve come to know and
love it. Or I have, though I’m definitely partial to the little
buggers. The Y chromosome, for those of you who slept through that
biology class because you were up late the night before studying human
anatomy in the back seat of a car, is the chromosome that defines
maleness. Add a Y chromosome to an egg and you get a boy. Don’t, and
you get a girl. Another way to look at it is that if the Y chromosome
gets lost on the way to the egg, you end up with a daughter. Feel free
to add the “If they’d stop and ask directions there would be more
baby boys in the world” joke of your choice here.
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Since Y
chromosomes don’t have partners, each time a gene goes bad it can’t
be fixed, not even with a lot of nagging from the X chromosome, a job
jar conspicuously left on the kitchen table, duct tape, and a case of
WD-40. |
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The Y chromosome is already in enough trouble as it is.
Scientists say it’s been shrinking for millions of years. Now, thanks
to Viagra and other drugs Bob Dole and Mike Ditka highly recommend, this
is no longer a problem. Just kidding. Actually there is no cure for
chromosome shrinkage. Well, other than not plunging one into a cold
swimming pool. The problem is that most chromosomes recombine with their
partners to repair screwed up genes and rejuvenate themselves. Since Y
chromosomes don’t have partners, each time a gene goes bad it can’t
be fixed, not even with a lot of nagging from the X chromosome, a job
jar conspicuously left on the kitchen table, duct tape, and a case of
WD-40. Bryan Sykes, author of the book Adam’s Curse - A Future
Without Men, says if this keeps up all men will be infertile in
about 125,000 years and women will have to go to Japan where hopefully
scientists will have progressed from creating mice without fathers to
creating kids without them. And since at that point all the scientists
will be women, they’ll have a vested interest in figuring it out.
This isn’t just a people problem,
since Y chromosomes are also found in other mammals. And papayas. Yes,
it turns out that there are male, female, and hermaphrodite papayas, and
it’s important to be able to tell them apart since hermaphrodites
yield the sweetest fruit, females next, and the male’s, well,
they’re flat out tasteless and undesirable. Isn’t it nice to know
there are constants in the world? The problem is you can’t tell a
papaya’s sex until it blooms, which can take six to 12 months. When
the papayas finally reach adolescence and have their coming out, workers
ungraciously yank out the females and males, leaving only the
hermaphrodites to bear tasty fruit. Why do I get the feeling that if Pat
Robertson hears this he’s never going to eat another papaya in his
life?
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I guess papayas could have gotten their Y chromosomes from
humans, which sounds like either the plot of a bad 1950’s horror movie
or a letter to the Penthouse Forum. |
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According
to a study reported in the journal Nature (motto: “Nature,
it’s a natural”), a biologist in Hawaii who was looking for a way to
determine a papaya’s sex from its seed discovered that the male has a
Y chromosome. In fact, it turns out that it looks a lot like ours. Okay,
it looks a lot like ours did about 250 million years ago. The scientist
estimates that papayas have had Y chromosomes for about 25 million
years, which makes you wonder where they picked them up. After all,
Chromosomes-R-Us didn’t open until 1924. I guess they could have
gotten them from humans, which sounds like either the plot of a bad
1950’s horror movie or a letter to the Penthouse Forum.
Either way, don’t spend too much
time thinking about this. Just pray that our ancestors came across some
very good looking papayas. And that scientists don’t figure out a way
to use those new, young, virile papaya Y chromosomes instead of ours.
After all, it’s one thing to be born without a father. It’s another
to have to learn to call that thing that sits at the head of the table
Papa Papaya without stumbling over its name or laughing. Personally, I
can’t wait to hear about science’s next discovery.
©2004 Mad Dog
Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
These columns appear in better newspapers across the country.
Read them instead of lamenting the downfall of the Y chromosome.
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