Lost in Translation: Do males and females read their genomes differently?

Marshall W. Nirenberg Lecture | Wednesday, May 20, 2015 | 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. ET

David C. Page, M.D.

Director

HHMI Investigator

HHMI – Whitehead Institute

page_admin@wi.mit.edu

Website

Summary

Dr. Page’s laboratory seeks to understand fundamental differences between males and females in health and disease, both within and beyond the reproductive tract. Most recently, the Page lab discovered that XY and XX sex chromosomes account for subtle differences in the molecular biology of male and female cells and tissues throughout the body. These findings emerged from the lab’s comparative genomic and evolutionary studies of the sex chromosomes of humans, other mammals, and birds. In earlier studies, the Page lab reconstructed the evolution of today’s X and Y chromosomes from an ancestral pair of chromosomes that existed 300 million years ago. They also discovered and characterized the most common genetic cause of spermatogenic failure in humans: deletion of the AZFc region of the Y chromosome. All of these insights were based on technological innovations pioneered by the Page lab to map and sequence Y and X (and Z and W) chromosomes with unprecedented precision and accuracy.