Scientists have long believed that at the genetic level, men and women are pretty much the same. According to textbooks, only two of the 46 gene-carrying chromosomes in a human cell -- a pair known as the sex chromosomes -- are noticeably different in males and females. But at a genetics seminar last week at Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Me., this conventional wisdom took a beating. Participants cited evidence that there may be many more differences in male and female genes than previously thought. That revelation challenges assumptions about heredity held for more than a century.
Human chromosomes come in...