Scientists Solve the Genetic Puzzle of Sex-related Y Chromosome

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Scientists have taken an important step forward in understanding the human genome -- our genetic blueprint -- by fully deciphering the enigmatic Y chromosome present in males, an achievement that could help guide research on infertility in men.

"I would credit new sequencing technologies and computational methods for this," said Arang Rhie, a staff scientist at the U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute and lead author of a research paper detailing the achievement in the journal Nature.

"It finally provides the first complete view of a Y chromosome's code, revealing more than 50% of the chromosome's length that was previously missing from our genome maps," said University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) biomolecular engineering professor and study co-author Karen Miga, co-leader of the Telomere-to-Telomere consortium behind the research.

The complete X chromosome sequence was published in 2020. But until now, the Y chromosome part of the human genome had contained big gaps.

"This is especially important because the Y chromosome has been traditionally excluded from many studies of human diseases," UCSC genomicist and study co-author Monika Cechova said.

Source: MEDspace