The NY Times had an article this week on a PLoS Biology article that reported that examination of cells of the fruit fly revealed:
(1) the gender/sex of the fruit fly "cell" is determined by the expression of genes called "doublesex" and "fruitless" which, when expressed one way reflects male and when expressed another way reflects females (2) this leads to the idea that at the cellualr level, cells "know" that they are either male or female but the surprising thing is that there are cells that are neither male of female, that is, doublesex/fruitless apparently is not "turned on" to be either sex. One way to think about this is that the cell doesn't know if is male or female. The notion that gender/sex is expressed at the cellular level of the fruit fly raises questions of how common this might be in other species, including humans. This situation can lead to a variety of speculations such as how does a "female" heart (i.e., cells of the heart tuned to be female) differ from a "male" heart? What happens when a male gets a female heart in a transplant? Will it affect their behavior is subtle ways? Will it make them more compassionate? Better listeners? Obsessive over shoes? For the brief NY Times article, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/science/11obflies.html?ref=science For the PLoS Biology article, see: http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1000365 -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=2647 or send a blank email to leave-2647-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
