Sex Chromosome Equality in Plants

Sex Chromosome Equality in Plants

Birds do it, bees do it—and now it appears that even plants do it. No, it’s not what you’re thinking. Sexual reproduction is obviously well-known in plants. Rather, the phenomenon in question is equalizing sex chromosome expression in males and females. In animals where males are XY and females are XX, the Y chromosome has lost most of its genes, so X chromosome expression is adjusted to keep t...

Karyotype and Sex-Chromosome Polymorphism in Nesokia indica, from Iran

Sex, Dose, and Equality

A s a rule, genes and chromosomes come in pairs. Sex chromosomes are an exception to this rule. Males of many species have only one X chromosome, a male-specific Y chromosome, and a set of autosomes (AA). Individuals with two X chromosomes and a set of autosomes (XX;AA) are female. Sex chromosomes were first noticed for this distinct unpaired morphology and are now known to have substantially d...

Sex Equality : Difference and Dominance

A materialist feminist approach to women's oppression destroys the idea that women are a "natural group": "a socia! group of a special kind, a group perceived as natural, a group of men considered as materially specific in their bodies." A lesbian society destroys the artificial (social) fact constituting women as a "natural group." A lesbian society pragmatically reveals that the division from...

Sex determination in plants.

Sex determination is an important developmental event in the life cycle of all sexually reproducing plants. Recent studies of sex determination in many plant species, from ferns to maize, have been fruitful in identifying the diversity of genetic and epigenetic factors that are involved in determining the sex of the flower or individual. In those species amenable to genetic analysis, significan...