Even More Rocket Science

Geeeeees! Who knew?:

"Women are not only more different from men than we knew. Women are more different from each other than we knew -- creatures of 'infinite variety,' as Shakespeare wrote.

'We poor men only have 45 chromosomes to do our work with because our 46th is the pathetic Y that has only a few genes which operate below the waist and above the knees,' Willard observed.

'In contrast, we now know that women have the full 46 chromosomes that they're getting work from and the 46th is a second X that is working at levels greater than we knew.'

[...]

The researchers learned that a whopping 15 percent -- 200 to 300 -- of the genes on the second X chromosome in women, thought to be submissive and inert, lolling about on an evolutionary Victorian fainting couch, are active, giving women a significant increase in gene expression over men.

As The New York Times science reporter Nicholas Wade, who is writing a book about human evolution and genetics, explained it to me: 'Women are mosaics, one could even say chimeras, in the sense that they are made up of two different kinds of cell. Whereas men are pure and uncomplicated, being made of just a single kind of cell throughout.'"