gender and genetics

December 14, 2009 11:18 AM

Please recommend reading that will help me understand the role gender and gender hormones play in determining which parental gene set dominates in an individual.
posted by effluvia to Science & Nature (10 answers total)

I don't know whether you are looking for academic papers or popular books, but I really enjoyed Adam's Curse.
Write back if that's not what you had in mind. I've got more.
posted by Knowyournuts at 11:22 AM on December 14, 2009

I'm not sure what you mean. Do you think that if the father has brown eyes and the mother has blue eyes, you think that the gender of the child (a sociological concept rather than the biological concept of sex) or the child's hormones will affect the child's eye color? Because it generally doesn't work that way, for genetic traits that are as obvious as eye color, and those that are less obvious. Also, according to our current understanding, it is generally not whole sets of parental alleles that are switched to become dominant because of some sort of hormonal response. The dominance characteristics of each gene are different.

For reading recommendations, try the genetics section of Campbell's Biology, which will be an introduction to genetics in general.
posted by grouse at 11:36 AM on December 14, 2009

Grouse is right. "The role" is "practically none".
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:59 AM on December 14, 2009

I've been trying to parse your question, and I think what you're trying to learn about is the phenomenon known as genomic imprinting. This is a phenomenon in which gene expression is at least partially related to the sex of the parent from which a given gene was inherited. Here is a somewhat out-of-date review on the topic, and from my brief skim of the article, there is no discussion of the role of sex hormones on the imprinting process (though since imprinting takes place within the germ cells, production of which is regulated by sex hormones, there is likely to be some distal effect).

Now, this is slightly different from what your question seems to be asking, which is whether an individual's levels of sex hormones impact which copy of a gene is expressed. That is a phenomenon I've never heard, and am dubious of a relationship there.
posted by amelioration at 12:15 PM on December 14, 2009

Possibly you're asking about genetic imprinting? Where genes from one parent or other are turned off at conception so the foetus only gets one working copy? This is a type of epigenetics and it generally occurs per gene (i.e. gene x is always maternally suppressed, gene y is always paternally suppressed) and hormones don't come into it. If this is what you're looking for let me know, I'll find some review articles.

Bryan Sykes can be a little heavy on the popular and light on the science, something to keep in mind if you do read his books. I'd recommend Steve Jones instead.
posted by shelleycat at 12:19 PM on December 14, 2009

Response by poster: Thanks very much for the replies! Yes, genomic imprinting is the direction I am seeking.
posted by effluvia at 12:50 PM on December 14, 2009

I was thinking Sykes because of the chapter on the battle of the mitochondria. (It's not about gender hormones, but on the gender track.)
posted by Knowyournuts at 12:50 PM on December 14, 2009

There are also some essays out there about genomic imprinting by Robert Sapolsky that are very readable. At least one of them is available in the book Monkeyluv.
posted by Knowyournuts at 1:47 PM on December 14, 2009

Here's a comprehensive review of imprinting in general. I think I've lost the ability to judge how technical scientific articles are so let me know if it's too complex or if you have questions.

I think the part you're particularly interested in is The Parent Offspring Conflict Hypothesis, where imprinting is put forward as being a method by which the parents fight over how much of the mother's resources the developing foetus gets. This article has a better description. This was a popular hypothesis when imprinting was first becoming understood and I don't know how well it's held up as we learn more about the ins and outs of imprinting and epigenetics in general. The whole area has turned out to be more complex and widespread than first thought, so parental conflict certainly isn't the whole story, but it's a compelling hypothesis for at least some gene clusters. Here's a recent article so it looks like it's still being discussed at least.
posted by shelleycat at 2:23 PM on December 14, 2009 [1 favorite]

Sexual differentiation is complex, and it's controlled by the presence of relatively large quantities of testosterone, induced by the presence of the Y chromosome. Most of the genes which control masculinization reside on non-sex chromosomes; women carry them, but they're not activated in women because they have very low levels of testosterone.

There's a peculiar genetic condition in which the testosterone receptors don't correctly recognize testosterone if it's present. If a person is XY and has this condition, such a person will develop to look female (for the most part).

But that genetic mutation is quite rare.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 4:50 PM on December 14, 2009