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A new study conducted on roundworms finds that a common plastic ingredient causes breaks in DNA strands, resulting in egg cells with the wrong number of chromosomes. Benzyl butyl phthalate (BBP) is a chemical that makes plastic more flexible and durable, and is found in many consumer products, including food packaging, personal care products and children's toys. Previous studies have shown that BBP interferes with the body's hormones and affects human reproduction and development, but the details of how it impacts reproduction have been unclear. In the new study, researchers tested a range of doses of BBP on the nematode...

The Y chromosome, which contains the male-determining gene in humans and other mammals, is degenerating in the human species and may cease to exist after a few million years. This would lead to extinction unless humans evolve a new sex gene. How the Y chromosome, the “Male Gene,” works Female humans, along with other mammals, have two X chromosomes, while males have just one. This is paired with a much smaller Y chromosome in men. The X chromosome contains around nine hundred genes, which carry out lots of tasks unrelated to sex, and the Y contains far fewer genes (55)...

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill Wednesday prompted by a decade-long CBS News California investigation into California's newborn genetic biobank. We still won't know who is using your DNA for research, or what the research is for, but the California Department of Public Health must now reveal the number of newborn DNA samples that California is storing and the number of DNA samples that the state sells to researchers each year. In response to our decade-long investigation, lawmakers introduced several bills this year that were intended to shed light on how the state is amassing and using California's newborn DNA...

International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach faced more questions about the gender eligibility controversy involving two boxers competing at the 2024 Paris Olympics in what was his final press conference before the Games conclude this weekend. Bach, who was first elected in 2013, did not sway from the IOC's stance on the eligibility concerns surrounding boxers Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan when speaking to the media Friday.

Lin Yu‑ting, a boxer who failed a gender eligibility test and was disqualified from an international competition last year, participated in the Olympics on Thursday. Lin easily defeated female athlete Sitora Turdibekova, from Uzbekistan.According to the New York Post, Lin is not “transgender” and Lin’s passport claims that she is a female. However, Lin did not meet the qualifications to compete against women at the World Boxing Championships in 2023. This was confirmed by the International Boxing Association (IBA) this week after another incident involving a suspected “transgender” athlete in women’s boxing.Day two of a boxer with XY Chromosomes beating...

A Texas college has reinstated a professor who was reportedly terminated for teaching about the traditional, biological definition of gender. In a statement published Tuesday, the law firm First Liberty Institute announced that St. Philip's College adjunct professor Johnson Varkey has been reinstated after he was fired in January 2023 for rejecting aspects of LGBT ideology.The law firm filed a charge of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission after the San Antonio, Texas-based historically black community college fired Varkey because the biology professor told his students that sex is determined by an individual's chromosomes. The professor was accused of...

The law firm representing Dr. Johnson Varkey said he will resume teaching by this fall ... A biology professor who was fired from a Texas community college for teaching students that X and Y chromosomes determine sex has been reinstated. First Liberty Institute, a law firm that defends religious liberty for Americans, announced .. that St. Philip's College in San Antonio, Texas, had reinstated Dr. Johnson Varkey, a former adjunct professor, a year after he was terminated. ... "We are happy that the Alamo Community College District voluntarily reinstated Dr. Varkey," Kayla Toney, Associate Counsel for First Liberty Institute, said....

Some 24 years ago, Diana Bianchi peered into a microscope at a piece of human thyroid and saw something that instantly gave her goosebumps. The sample had come from a woman who was chromosomally XX. But through the lens, Bianchi saw the unmistakable glimmer of Y chromosomes—dozens and dozens of them. “Clearly,” Bianchi told me, “part of her thyroid was entirely male.” The reason, Bianchi suspected, was pregnancy. Years ago, the patient had carried a male embryo, whose cells had at some point wandered out of the womb. They’d ended up in his mother’s thyroid—and, almost certainly, a bunch of...

Republican presidential candidate Gov. Ron DeSantis and other conservative critics took aim at former president Donald Trump for hedging this week on the explosive issue of transgenderism — and refusing to give a clear answer on whether he believes it’s possible to change one’s sex . Trump responded with a long-drawn-out “Ummm” and an uncomfortable laugh when host Megyn Kelly, in a Thursday interview on her “The Megyn Kelly Show” on Sirius XM, asked: “Can a man become a woman?” “In my opinion,” he finally said, shaking his head slightly, “you have a man, you have a woman.” “I, I,...

A Texas professor who also works as a Pastor has been fired after teaching students that sex in humans is determined by X and Y chromosomes. Dr. Johnson Varkey was fired from his role at St. Philip's College in San Antonio in January of this year after teaching at the facility for 20 years. He was sacked after four students walked out of his class last November in protest over his teaching that X and Y chromosomes determine sex in humans. In an interview with First Liberty Live, Varkey denied claims he injected religious teachings into his lessons - which...

A Texas biology professor is appealing to be reinstated after being fired following telling students that sex is based on chromosomes. According to a letter from First Liberty Legal Group, released June 20, biology professor Johnson Varkey was fired from St. Philip’s College in San Antonio after four students walked out of his class when Varkey said that sex is determined by chromosomes in November 2023. A January 10 email from Randall Dawson, the Vice President for Academic Success at St. Philip read, “I am sending you notification that Alamo Colleges District Human Resources department is in receipt of an...

As many as one in 500 men may carry an extra sex chromosome — either an X or a Y — but very few of them likely know about it...The research, published June 9 in the journal Genetics in Medicine(opens in new tab), included data from more than 207,000 men who provided information to the U.K. Biobank, a repository of genetic and health data from half a million U.K.-based participants. Typically, males carry one X- and one Y-shaped sex chromosome in each of their cells, but among the study participants, there were 213 men who carried an extra X chromosome...

Sales for some at-home DNA testing kits are on the decline amid consumer privacy concerns. 23andMe, the home DNA-testing company, is laying off about 100 people, nearly 14 percent of its staff, the company confirmed to FOX Business Friday. The company cut staffers in its operations department in charge of growing and scaling the company as fewer people pay for genetic test results which can reveal things about their heritage or how prone they are to health conditions like type 2 diabetes or celiac disease, according to a CNBC report. The declining sales came as a surprise for CEO Anne...

Landmark new research that involves analyzing millions of DNA barcodes has debunked much about what we know today about the evolution of species. In a massive genetic study, senior research associate at the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University Mark Stoeckle and University of Basel geneticist David Thaler discovered that virtually 90 percent of all animals on Earth appeared at right around the same time. More specifically, they found out that 9 out of 10 animal species on the planet came to being at the same time as humans did some 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. "This conclusion...

Landmark new research that involves analyzing millions of DNA barcodes has debunked much about what we know today about the evolution of species.In a massive genetic study, senior research associate at the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University Mark Stoeckle and University of Basel geneticist David Thaler discovered that virtually 90 percent of all animals on Earth appeared at right around the same time.More specifically, they found out that 9 out of 10 animal species on the planet came to being at the same time as humans did some 100,000 to 200,000 years ago."This conclusion is very surprising,"...

All humans are descended from just TWO people and a catastrophic event almost wiped out ALL species 100,000 years ago, scientists claim Genetic 'bar codes' of five million animals from different species were surveyedThe research deduced that humans and animals sprang from single pair This happened after a catastrophic event a long time after the last ice age All modern humans descended from a solitary pair who lived 100,000 to 200,000 years ago, scientists say.Scientists surveyed the genetic 'bar codes' of five million animals - including humans - from 100,000 different species and deduced that we sprang from a...

All modern humans descended from a solitary pair who lived 100,000 to 200,000 years ago, scientists say. Scientists surveyed the genetic 'bar codes' of five million animals - including humans - from 100,000 different species and deduced that we sprang from a single pair of adults after a catastrophic event almost wiped out the human race. These bar codes, or snippets of DNA that reside outside the nuclei of living cells, suggest that it's not just people who came from a single pair of beings, but nine out of every 10 animal species, too

When uploaded to Netflix, an episode of the educational children's show "Bill Nye the Science Guy" cut out a segment saying that chromosomes determine one's gender. In the original episode, titled "Probability," a young woman told viewers, "I'm a girl. Could have just as easily been a boy, though, because the probability of becoming a girl is always 1 in 2." "See, inside each of our cells are these things called chromosomes, and they control whether we become a boy or a girl, " the young woman continued. "See, there are only two possibilities: XX, a girl, or XY, a...

Researchers say it may be possible to slow and even reverse aging by keeping DNA more stably packed together in our cells In a breakthrough discovery, scientists report that they have found the key to keeping cells young. In a study published Thursday in Science, an international team, led by Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte at the Salk Institute, studied the gene responsible for an accelerated aging disease known as Werner syndrome, or adult progeria, in which patients show signs of osteoporosis, grey hair and heart disease in very early adulthood. These patients are deficient in a gene responsible for copying...

(Photo courtesy of the Norcia family) This week at CWR we’re featuring two articles on closely related topics: the spread of non-invasive, highly accurate prenatal testing for Down syndrome (and the expected increase in abortion of unborn babies diagnosed with Down syndrome) and recent advances in the search for improved therapies to treat—and possibly reverse the effects of—the chromosomal disorder. We think the two pieces—both interesting and worthwhile on their own, and particularly illuminating when read together—shed light on different aspects of the complicated subject of how individuals with Down syndrome are viewed and treated by our society today....