The assertion that men have more genetic material due to the silencing of the second X chromosome is kind of a misunderstanding of how genetics work. Yes, men have more genes, but not all genes code for proteins that will be used by the body. Some are basically meta-instructions that can activate or silence another part of the genetic code, and that is likely how a lot of the Y chromosome works.
Yes, Joshua, I agree. That was not the best choice of words on my part. I am aware that non-protein-coding regions are not merely "junk DNA" but play regulatory role, which I envision as a sort instruction code for the utilization of the data array itself (=genes).
By saying that males have more active genes than females I meant to say that they had more active genetic material. I did not look into Y chromosome specifics and only considered its bulk as a whole.And yes, since the default is female and males have a complete set of genetic material, then it sounds plausible that the content of Y must be suppressing the female development and direct the male.
Darryl, yes I see it now, even though I still am not too kin on your explanation. With 50-50 gender distribution, the 2/3 - 1/3 distribution of X genes is the feature of any generation, and so inductions/multiplications don't illustrate much. The 2/3 - 1/3 sequential distribution comes from the sequence of an X being passed along in a the repeated cycle: mother -> daughter -> grandson -> girl like mother again (or father ->daughter->granddaughter->boy like father again)
It is easy to see if we substitute 3 generic X chromosomes for 3 unique ones and label them A, B and C. Then instead of XX*XY mating pair we have AB*CY. Then, keeping the population constant (here is just one pair), we have these 3 consecutive generations with unique combinations of X chromosomes, (while culling all AA BB CC girls as genetically too poor and therefore non viable lol, as well as removing the duplicates like CA, CB or BA, we get this unique combinations of pairs in 3 generations:
1st generation AB CY
2nd generation AC BY
3rd generation BC AY
4th generation AB CY again, the cycle repeats itself
If we trace any of the X chromosomes above, say A, we see that every 3 generations it spends 2 in females and one in males. So yes, I see it now, thank you.
Edited by xEva, 24 January 2014 - 10:23 PM.