Androgenesis

Posted on April 1, 2008  Comments (0)

All Dad by Carl Zimmer

This week’s revelation is androgenesis. Androgenesis is what happens when kids get all their genes from their father.

Androgenesis, it turns out, transforms fatherhood into a parasitic invasion. It begins like normal fertilization, with a sperm fusing to an egg. But then the egg’s DNA gets hurled out of its nucleus, so that the sperm’s genes are the only ones left in the egg. The egg begins to develop into an embryo, but only after it has lost the mother’s DNA.

Related: Bdelloid Rotifers Abandoned Sex 100 Million Years AgoOne Species’ Genome Discovered Inside Another’sSex and the SeahorseFemale Sharks Can Reproduce AloneExplaining Genetics

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