Tim, following Bill, writes:

>> The article is at: http://www.genome.gov/11007628
>> 
>> If I read it right, it means that the Y is not as susceptible to mutation 
>> as was once thought. 
>
>Very interesting ;-)
>
>With a single backup copy, point mutations can potentially be undone.

The discovery that the information for some of the genes on the Y chromosome
appears to be encoded pallindromically is only a few months old, thus the
information transmission system has not been characterized in detail yet.

However, it would seem very unlikely that it could act as an error-recovery
mechanism. When you only have two copies of anything -- and they disagree --
there is no simple way to determine which, if either, copy is correct.

More likely, the presence of a pallindromically-encoded sequence would serve
only as an error-check mechanism, not an error-recovery one. If the two arms of
the pallindrome do not agree, all that could be done with assurance is to
discard (or disregard) the entire chromosome.

Nonetheless, doing even merely that would represent a great step forward in
creating an accurate intergenerational information-transmission assurance
mechanism. There is certainly no shortage of spermatozoa. If you find this one
defective, you have plently more to choose from. One wag once answered the
question, "Why are so many sperm defective?" by saying,
"Because there are so
many of them."

Wirt Atmar
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