The first attempt to determine the building blocks of our genetic code took place 20 years ago, but there were still significant gaps left in the sequences of all 23 pairs of human chromosomes.

Until now, the Y chromosome portion of the human genome has contained large gaps which made it difficult to understand variation and associated disease. The structure of the Y chromosome has been ...

Scientists have finally filled the gaps in the sequence of the human Y chromosome, 20 years after the first draft of its DNA code was published. The work reveals a complete catalog of the genes in ...

The SHOX gene is a key player in influencing height. In human females, most of the X chromosome is inactivated, except for PAR1, which escapes X-inactivation, and both human males and females ...

But it might also put us at risk for uniquely human brain disorders. The study appears in Nature. The research focused on parts of chromosomes known as human accelerated regions (HARs), which have ...

To Shakespeare’s Hamlet we humans are “the paragon of animals”. But recent advances in genetics are suggesting that humans ...

The Y chromosome is one of the smallest of the 46 human chromosomes, but it has been the most difficult for researchers to read. Until recently, more than half of it was unassembled. Having the full ...

For many years, the human Y chromosome was terra incognita. Scientists completed the genetic sequences of other chromosomes, the threadlike structures that hold an organism’s DNA. But more than ...

For decades, the Y chromosome — one of the two human sex chromosomes — has been notoriously challenging for the genomics community to sequence due to the complexity of its structure. Now, this elusive ...

Human-accelerated regions (HARs) in chromosomes help human neurons grow multiple neurites. When HARs were added to artificial chimpanzee neurons, as seen on the right, they grew extra neurites, ...