Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Palindromes on the Y Chromosome

New Clues to Sex Anomalies in How Y Chromosomes Are Copied
Most chromosomes come in pairs, which helps in detecting and repairing errors when DNA is copied. However, there's only one copy of the Y chromosome (found only in males) but many of its genes occur in palindromes (sequences which read the same forward and backward e.g. Madam Im Adam). When the Y chromosome is copied, the palindromic regions are folded over, so they can be compared for errors.